Tai Kok Tsui Catholic Primary
School (Hoi Fan Road)
Planning for Active Reading –
based on the reader “Hansel and
Gretel”
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
Active
Reading
responding with
imagination and
emotion
solving reading
problems
= 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
Planning reading and thinking
activities
• 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
• 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