Planning for Active Reading – based on the reader “Hansel and Gretel”

Tai Kok Tsui Catholic Primary School (Hoi Fan Road)

Adviser: Nancy Tse

(Curriculum Development Officer)

Teachers: Adeline Cheung, Joyce Chan

Maria Lau, Jolla Chau

Starting point

prior experience of teaching readers

just read a part of the story and asked questions, and then read some more

a boring procedure of reading line by line & checking on students’ understanding of the details

difficult to motivate students and get active responses

look for an alternative way to teach a reader

What we learnt about teaching reading to early readers

1. Comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning Research findings.

2. There are 3 basic components in reading.

What “Active Reading” means to us

finding out story events & development

making connections to old

knowledge and life experiences

looking for deeper meanings

solving reading problems

responding with imagination and emotion

Active Reading

= Purposeful and enjoyable reading

How we planned our lessons

1. Setting clear overall learning objectives

2. Dividing story into sections and designing reading and thinking activities

3. Setting assessment criteria

• Discussing teaching reading strategies, and planning our lessons

• Detailed planning of key questions and an analysis of strategies practiced

• Putting in different types of questions requiring students to visit the 3 components of reading

• In the classroom we would stay alert and listen carefully to student’s responses, be ready to provide the hints and prompts

Planning reading and thinking activities

Planning reading and thinking activities

• We tried the questions on ourselves

• Some of the inference questions were not easy to answer

• Free-response questions also stimulated a lot of imaginative answers from all of us.

Highlights of our lessons

Observations and reflections

• A challenge for teachers to try to teach the reader in this way

• Not done enough on vocabulary building

• Oral prediction may not be enough

• Students should eventually learn to ask questions