BEFORE READING ACTIVITIES
Talk about the topic of the book
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Predict from an illustration
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Predict from a word
Reader Questions
Sequencing illustrations
Ask questions about the topic of the
book
Develop word banks and display
vocabulary about the book and about
the topics you are studying
Story Telling
Before and After Chart
Picture Flick
Graphic Overlay - text organisation for
nonfiction.
Skimming and scanning
Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS
Discuss the topic of the text with students – adult shares their
own experience of the topic of the text. If possible use the same
tense as the text uses.
e.g. Cat on the Roof:
Does anyone have a cat? My friend had a cat and it was a very
naughty cat. One day it climbed up a tree and my friend thought it
was stuck. What do you think she did?
Talk about the illustration on the front cover, or a key illustration
from the book
 Ask the children to work in groups to think about what the story
might be about
 Use some of the vocabulary of the book that children might find
difficult, and explain where necessary
 Read the title of the book
 Ask what the children think the story is going to be about
 Ask the children to think of some questions they would like
answered by reading the text
 Give groups/ pairs of children a set of pictures from the book and
ask them to sequence them, prior to reading
 Ask questions about the topic of the book, but relating to the
children’s own experiences.
E.g. Possum Magic What do you like to eat? What do you eat at
home?
 Use a semantic web to display these words

Tell the story, using the illustrations or diagrams you draw, before
you read the book
 Piece of paper with 2 columns, brainstorm all you know about the
topic, list in before column,
What I know about .....
 After reading add to second column
What we have learnt.
 Can be completed over time.
Before reading, skim through the illustrations and get a sense of
contents, characters or setting.
Look at the front cover, skim through text browsing at pictures,
predict the story,
Read the text, and discuss the difference between the prediction and
what happened.
Teaches students about text organisation for nonfiction.
 Create a visual representation of the layout or organisation of the
page, label boxes e.g. heading, title, subtitle, picture, text
information
 model skimming
 talk about how this is used to predict the content of the text
DURING READING
Modelled reading
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Model reading strategies
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Oral Cloze
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Pause and predict
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Reread for detail
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Matching words
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Shadow Reading
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Echo Reading
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Buddy Reading
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Diagrams flow charts or story maps
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Word Masking
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Beat the Buzzer Quiz
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Hunt the Text Challenge
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Jigsaw reading Scaffolding Language
Scaffolding Learning Pauline Gibbons
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Reading aloud Scaffolding Language
Scaffolding Learning Pauline Gibbons
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Interesting word chart
an activity to clarify new or unknown
vocabulary
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Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS
Read the text aloud. Try and bring the book alive, use expression,
and pausing to add interest.
Read the book more than once.
use hard words and difficult phrases to talk about/ show the
children how you read the text.
leave out words while reading the book to the children and they
fill in the gap, good way of gauging comprehension
stop reading the book
ask the children What might happen next? What a character
might be thinking? Feeling?
re-read the text for detail, to make sure the reading is
understood.
use word cards around the room, and ask the children to find the
words you read from the text
Record yourself reading the text, allow small groups of children to
read along, with the text.
Read text sentence by sentence, students read the same sentence
after the teacher
Reading to younger buddies provides opportunities for older
readers to model fluent reading. It gives weaker older readers
opportunities to practise on easier books
Children can draw diagrams flow charts or story maps to show
structure of the book
Cover words in big book, (both content and functional words) and
children predict the word. Discuss alternatives. This strategy can
be used to build vocabulary.
Practise scanning to locate specific details to answer quiz
questions Reading Resource Book, First Steps
Quiz to scan the text to locate specific information. Create
challenge cards to encourage scanning of the text
Have 3 or 4 different readings at different levels to cater for
different abilities in the class, about the same topics. In groups
children read one reading, and become experts about that
reading. They share the information with members of other
groups. This provides a real purpose for reading, and authentic
context for summarising, as the experts decide what information
they share.
Listening to a good reader helps children recognise that good
readers make meaning, for both young and older readers. Read
aloud both fiction and non-fiction books.
as you are reading, add interesting words and the page number,
use contextual clues to show students how to gain meaning
AFTER READING ACTIVITIES
Purpose:
These activities assume the children know the text and have no comprehension difficulties and use the text as a
springboard and may fulfil any of these three purposes
1. Use the familiar text as basis for language study.
2. Allow students to respond creatively to what they have read.
3. Focus students more deeply on the information of the text.
1. Use the familiar text as basis for language study
Jumbled text/sentence exercises
Text reconstruction
Consonant groups
Phonic families
Cloze activities
in groups or pairs, children justify why they
have chosen their answer
Ask children true/false questions OR fact/
opinion statements related to the text,
Cut up paragraph into sentence strips and mix them up, reorder
into paragraph, cut up sentences into words and mix them up,
reorder into sentences
Cut an excerpt of text into paragraphs or sentences, students to
put into order and explain their answer
Sort objects, or pictures of objects into groups using the
beginning sound (Pencil, pen, paper, box, ball, lid, leaf)
Build word lists using words in the book, that contain the same
sounds, spelt the same way
Traditional – every 7th word,
syntactic- structure words,
semantic- content words
oral cloze –children fill in the missing words, while they read
along with the teacher
Monster cloze – This consists of only the title, and gaps. Students
guess words which are written in and as more words are added it
becomes easier to complete the cloze.
Vanishing cloze – Choose a part of the text, or a summary. Write
it all on the board, read together, then rub out one word, reread,
putting in the missing word, then erase another word and repeat
the process. Continue until all the words are removed and the
students are “Reading” from memory.
Cut up paragraph into sentence strips and mix them up, reorder
into paragraph, cut up sentences into words and mix them up,
reorder into sentences
2. Allow students to respond creatively to what they have read.
Innovate on the text-

Innovate the ending
Sensory chart
Allows children to see, feel and hear
characters, settings or events.
Cartoon strip
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Readers theatre
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Wanted posters
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Freeze frames
A drama activity that show a tableaux of key
stages of the story.
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Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS
change the story, but keep the same story line e.g. different
characters, main events,
Write a new ending, in groups or as a whole class.
Children read text, or passage
add information about what it might look like, sound like or
feel like
Turn the story into a cartoon strip, using the dialogue as
words in speech bubbles, in groups or individually,
Children each have a copy of the book,
choose a child for each character’s dialogue,
the other children read narration.
Practise the reading for the performance.
Children could script their own text based on the story.
(innovate the text)
Design a wanted poster for a character in the book,
incorporate as much as the information from the story as
possible.
The group needs to decide the main events, and then how
they will be shown, and then how to move quickly from one
to the next. No talking is required. Preparation of the
tableaux allows discussion of the main elements characters
and events of the story
Audience close their eyes
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the group prepares the tableaux, using their bodies and
simple props,
after 10 seconds, the audience close their eyes again and the
group arrange for the next tableaux and so on until the story
is told.
3. Focus students more deeply on the information of the text
Timelines
Hot seat
Story map
Retell the story
Picture sentence matching
Questioning the text
Book discussion groups
Summarising and paraphrasing the text
Venn Diagrams
Retrieval chart
What’s your story?
Famous five key word search
Very Important points
Main idea pyramid
Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS
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Texts that incorporate passage of time lend themselves to a
timeline. Children can create and illustrate time lines
 Children sit in a circle and one child is chosen as a character
from the book.
 Other students ask questions to find out more about the
character’s life. These questions should be consistent with
the story.
 Move back, or forwards in time Its seventy years ago and the
old woman is now only a child.... and continue to ask
questions of the person in the hot seat. This gives children
lots of ideas for stories of their own.
 As a group draw the story, on a wall chart, sequence the
main actions and record with illustrations
 children use the pictures to retell the story (Gives
information about their understanding of the story)
 Take about 6 pictures and 6 matching sentences, children to
match up.
 Focus on the pictures and on the characters, ask questions
that show children that what is in the book is not necessarily
the whole truth. What is the mother doing? What is the
father doing? Do all mothers and fathers do this?
 Discuss what the characters are like
 Make lists of words or ideas that are associated with key
people in the text
 Rewrite a well known tale, changing the characteristics of
characters
 Talk about stereotyping
 What did you enjoy about this book?
 What are some of the major themes of this book?
 What did you appreciate about your favourite character?
 Oral summaries, in groups students read, and collectively
summarise
 Students to write a summary, limit the number of sentences.
 Suggest a title for each paragraph
 Write 2 or 3 sentences under each paragraph heading’
 With narrative, ask children to retell shorter and shorter,
until as short as possible, write on the board and discuss
 Explain key points in less than 1 minute
 Groups work together to compose a sentence that
summarises the text
 Use two or more overlapping circles to compare topics,
characters, plots, or facts
 Chart to record information about a number of categories or
topics to allow comparisons.
 Teach students about the structure of a text. Give students a
recording sheet with headings linked to the text e.g. setting,
characters, events, text type and theme. After several of
these activities, students can compare texts
Reading Resource Book, First Steps
Reading Resource Book, First Steps
Reading Resource Book, First Steps
References
Learning to Learn in a Second Language Pauline Gibbons
Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning Pauline Gibbons
Reading Resource Book, First Steps
Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS
Workshop 4 - Support Resource - APPLLS