Low Prep Reading Activities

Something I have not been as great about doing during these Covid times has been reading novels.  My hope is that next school year I will get back to them again.  We are currently reading a novel in my level 3 and 4 AP classes and the plan is to read one in German 1 before the end of the year.  As I've said before, I am so impressed by my students and what that notice and ask about whenever we read a longer text.  They always ask great questions about the grammar and punctuation because they are seeing so much of the language. 

Here are some of the activites that I like to do either after reading a section or to start the next day to remember what we read the during the previous class.

Some of the fastest and simplest activties we do are 2 truths and a lie.  Students write 2 things that happened in the chapter and 1 thing that did not.  They read them outloud and classmates say which is the lie.  Another well liked activity is social media posts with hashtags from the main characters.  Students choose one character to focus on and write what that character would write on their social media feed.  Students read them to class and the other classmates say which character would have written that post.  An old favorite is the snatch game.  The teacher makes true or false statements and the students have one object in between them.  They snatch the item up when the statement made by the teacher is false.  

Ask students to write three things that happened in the reading.  They are 95% sure the first thing they write is correct, for the second thing they write about something they are 50%-75% sure that happend.  For the last thing, they are about 25% sure that it happened.  This lets the students know that you want them to try and it's okay if the 3 facts are not 100% correct.  This activity really seems to take some of the pressure off from being completely correct.  Students also get really proud of themselves when the lower facts are correct.  

Students create something artistic of something they understand.  We mostly do drawings but I have used play dough, pipe cleaners, and legos to do this as well.  Their products can then be used for so many things. Students can tell others what they created and why, line themselves up with their products in order of what happened in the story, or create a gallery walk where they either write sentences or talk about the creative product.  

Another drawing activity is to partner students up.  The partners pick 1 sentence in the reading they understand.  On a paper or dry erase board, one partner draws a picture.  The other partner simply writes the sentence on a separate board or paper.  The teacher then mixes them up.  Sometimes I will lable the pictures with numbers and the sentences with letters.  The students then walk around and write which picture goes to which sentence.  Other times I will give the students random sentences and pictures (not their own original) and they must find their partner with the sentence or picture that matches them.  Students can also work as a class to put the pairs together, but they must be told they are not allowed to put their own original pair together.  

The teacher gives important vocabulary words and the students have to explain what the significance in the reading was.  Each student can complete the same words, students can divide up the words or race to say the importance for points.  The teacher can ask students to stand up and they are allowed to sit down after explaining the significance of a word.

If you want to stay in the TL, this next activity would be most appriopriate for the upper levels but it would work in their L1 in the lower levels.  Students build connections to the reading.  Is there a book a movie that this story reminds them of?  Which character do they relate most with?  What's a similar experience that happened in their lives?

Here's a graphic organizer that I created.  It reads from the top clockwise: Who, with whom, what, where, when, an important or nice quote, to where/ what will happen, feelings/thoughts of the main characters, why.  

Group Jobs- I just saw this in a presentation from the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, but I couldn't find it again when I looked back through.  Whoever talked about this Thanks so much!  Students are given tasks and divy them up in a group after reading:

1) Vocabulary- Find important vocabulary terms

2) Illustrator- Illustrate important events

3) Summarizer- Write a summary

4) Questioner/Fortune-teller- Write questions about reasons for events or questions about what will happen next

5) Connector- Connect the story to another book or film

The final things I will mention in this post is The Lucky Reading Game by Senora Chase.   I created a few questions as my students read and we played afterwards.  They really enjoyed playing.  

I hope this gives you some easy go to activities for reading with your students.  I'd love to hear what has been successful in your classroom.  Feel free to post in the comments.