Classroom Tools for Reading Lessons

As a teacher, I have always believed in making my lessons interesting by creating meaningful classroom activities for my students. The worksheets and tools that I design are to help me to achieve the objectives of my lessons. The following are some classroom tools that can be used for reading lessons. These tools are designed to help students to understand their responsibilities as learners while doing a reading activity. I find these tools help to create a sense of purpose among students. 

The self - assessment rubric for reading is designed to help learners understand what they need to do while reading as to develop their skills. By referring to this rubric they will be able to understand what they need to do in order to display understanding while reading a text. At times,  students may not understand the rubric, so we teachers can actually demonstrate how to use the rubric. We also need to help students to explore the reading skills so that they know what to do. We as teachers have to remember that reading task is not about reading a text and answering questions. There are more to it, and this is one of the rubrics that may help students to understand what they need to know.  

The Reading Grid is a set of tasks that can help our learners to be actively engaged in reading. There are 16 tasks altogether and students can be given a choice on picking 5 tasks they would like to do. This reading activity can also be done in groups of four where students can pick activities of their choice and work individually, then they can share the outcome with the rest of the group members. As teachers, we have to ensure that the text they are working on will allow them to do all the tasks. If any of the tasks is not do-able, it is important to inform the students not to select the task.

The self - assessment reading chart shown above has listed 10 can do statements that are related to reading activities. Learners can be asked to complete the assessment for reading after a reading lesson so that they would know what they have achieved and what they need to work on. This chart can also help learners to understand what is expected of them during a reading lesson and develop a sense of purpose for reading. Probably after the first assessment, we will get more 'yes' for the second time as students will be more aware of things that the should do.

This is just another version of self - assessment tool, to help learners to understand what they have achieved and what they need to work on while reading to understand a text better. 

The assessment tool shown above is slightly different as the can do statements have been put into four categories. This assessment tool is more suitable to be used when we are dealing with higher intermediate or advanced groups.

The is used for wrap - up activities after a reading lesson. This is quite a commonly used tool for post-reading activities. I have used this quite a number of times and it worked really well in my classes.

As a teacher, I think the tools alone will not help us to develop our students' reading fluency. These are just tools that may help to make our teaching better. We, teachers, have to think of ways and activities on how to develop our students reading fluency with the aid of the tools. So do not solely rely on the tools that I have shared, make sure the reading activities are interesting. I will share interesting reading activities soon enough.

 Please click here to download the PDF version of the tools for reading lessons.