Classroom Practice 4
Reading Skills
Teaching the students to read is not an easy work to do especially here in Indonesia where reading is not necessarily to do. Increasing reading habit among students always meet a lot of challenges. However there are some strategies that can be done to improve their skills in reading. Here are some of the examples of the practice that I have with my students across year level.
PYP 1 – Read a loud (Retelling)
Students at the age of seven usually still have difficulties to comprehend one reading passage or a simple reading book. On the other hand their ability to record and visualize things are good. Based on these reasons one of the strategies that can be done is assisting them by reading the story first for them (it is better if we can visualize it by using tools or gesture and vioce tones. Then after the story ends challenge them to retell the story in a small group (maximum 4 students–>for equal chance) then continue to an individual task where they should present the story or message by using oral or written task.
PYP 2 – Story Prediction and Identifying Keywords
In this reading skills, students learn about the structure of a sentence. Then, they find which one is the subject and verb in that sentence. By doing and understanding this before they learn to find the keyword, the students will be able to choose the correct keyword.
Upper Grade-Book Review and Book Brochure
At this stage students are more challenged to do the work since they need to add their creativity in it. They can choose fiction or other books such as folktales, fables, and fairy tales to be explored. Some of the themes that they can choose are;
PYP 1 – Read a loud (Retelling)
Students at the age of seven usually still have difficulties to comprehend one reading passage or a simple reading book. On the other hand their ability to record and visualize things are good. Based on these reasons one of the strategies that can be done is assisting them by reading the story first for them (it is better if we can visualize it by using tools or gesture and vioce tones. Then after the story ends challenge them to retell the story in a small group (maximum 4 students–>for equal chance) then continue to an individual task where they should present the story or message by using oral or written task.
PYP 2 – Story Prediction and Identifying Keywords
In this reading skills, students learn about the structure of a sentence. Then, they find which one is the subject and verb in that sentence. By doing and understanding this before they learn to find the keyword, the students will be able to choose the correct keyword.
Upper Grade-Book Review and Book Brochure
At this stage students are more challenged to do the work since they need to add their creativity in it. They can choose fiction or other books such as folktales, fables, and fairy tales to be explored. Some of the themes that they can choose are;
- Create an acrostic poem of the main character
- Find out the moral message of the story
- Describe the similarity/ies of the culture appear in the story and the origin country/place
- Draw one of the setting in the story
- Pretend that you are the characters in the story, try to describe what do you want to do (If I were……………………..I would………………………………………….
- Try to make a different ending for the story
- Describe the main character through picture
- Make an explanation paragraph about the origin place of the story
- Make a poem of the story
- Find similarities and differences of the story that you have chosen with one of Indonesian Legend (e.g. Malin Kundang)