My Spanish students are beginning to read Mira Canion’s Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto, and I was looking for some pre-reading activities to get started. The Teacher’s Guide has a few short, comprehensible readings about Veracruz, Henry Morgan and buccaneers, but I was looking for a way to do more than simply read the short informational articles, I wanted them to engage. Enter “What is the answer to this question…”
First, let me explain the activity. The teacher writes the “answer” to a question on the board or chart paper. Each student is given a post-it note and must write a question for the “answer.” It doesn’t matter if the question is correct or incorrect. What matters is that students are thinking about the “answer,” thereby activating their prior knowledge and preparing to read. Second, let me explain how I used this activity pre and post reading. Pre-Reading. Before reading the informational articles, I wrote three “answers” (Henry Morgan, Veracruz, bucaneros) in the center of 3 separate pieces of chart paper. I gave each student 3 yellow post-it notes, one for each “answer.” I asked them to come up with a question for each answer, writing each question on a separate post-it note. Students then placed their post-it notes on the appropriate chart paper. I read a few of the questions from the chart paper that corresponded to our first reading in order to further increase student involvement in the reading as well as set a purpose for reading, which was to determine if any of these questions were accurate. We then read one of the three articles, circling and personalizing as much as possible. Post-Reading. After reading the article, we determined the accuracy of some of the pre-reading question. Students were then each given an orange post-it note. I asked them to write another question for the answer, although this time, their question had to be one that was accurate. Students placed their orange post-it on the chart paper. We then read the new questions. This helped to verify information that students had just read and provided another opportunity to interact with the text beyond reading. We then repeated the process with the remaining two articles. Post-Reading Twist. The questions that the students wrote could be re-phrased into true/false statements for a formative review or quick reading check. Post-Reading Twist #2. Rewrite the questions to be statements, using questions/statements from all three charts/answers. Read each statement and have the students identify the correct answer. This very low prep activity turned out to be a rather entertaining way to introduce an informational text. The students came up with VERY creative pre-reading questions that really increased engagement. This activity also got them moving somewhat and helped to break up the reading process without losing engagement.
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Jessie Oelke
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