by Oxford University Press ELT

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Developing Reading and Writing Skills | Q&A

Thinking back on the Developing Reading and Writing Skills webinars, it was
wonderful to see so many teachers participating from all around the world. Thank
you all for your participation, sharing your own ideas, and all your wonderful
questions. While we managed to discuss a number of your questions during the
sessions, this blog post is here to answer some of those that we did not manage to
get through.

Webinar Activities

Could the activities we looked at be used with other age groups?

The content of the webinar was focused on young learners, however all the
activities we looked at work just as well with teens and even adults. The �Who?
What? Why?� activity where students analyse the writer�s purpose, for example, can
be used in exactly the same way with all age groups, the only thing that would
change is the text you use in class.

Similarly, the activity below, designed to encourage students to respond to the

text by sharing facts, ideas and questions that have occurred to them, can be used
with very little variation. If you are working with older students you may wish to
take out the visual prompts of the book, light bulb and question mark and replace
them with question prompts, such as �What have you learned?�, �What ideas does the
text give you?�, �What questions do you have?� However, this is in no way
necessary, and many adult learners will find the images just as useful for
prompting their ideas as the young learners do.

reading and writing activities

How frequently we should use these activities in class?

My answer to that is as often as you can! Getting into the habit of looking at
reading texts as pieces of writing is important, and these activities are designed
to help your students to do just that. I recommend repeating these tasks at least
once every couple of weeks. By doing this, the students will quickly learn what is
expected of them, and because the texts we are using in class are different every
time, the students don�t get bored. If you are worried about repeating the same
activities with your class you can always vary the way the students are working
(pairs, groups, individual, or whole class discussion), or the way they present
their answers: Oral presentations, mind maps, graphic organisers, or written
paragraphs would all be good alternatives.

Error Correction

There were quite a few questions regarding correcting mistakes in our students�
writing, so I shall attempt to answer them all together. When and how we correct
our students� writing will depend on the objective of the writing task that you
set. A free writing task, for example, would typically not be corrected at all, as
these tasks are usually a tool for thinking. However, if we are practicing specific
skills or writing task types then we will need to factor in some level of error
correction.

One of the biggest benefits of written English is that students can go back over
their work, and think about and correct what they have written. Like many teachers,
in my classroom I use error correction codes to enable students to self-correct
their writing. Allowing students to correct themselves gives them the opportunity
to think about their writing, and put all that they have learned in class into
practice. Of course, before you start using a correction code you need to let your
students know that this is what you will be doing. Make sure that the correction
code you use is on the wall of the classroom and that your students have their own
copies for working at home, that way they will become familiar with it.

Of course, what we correct is a more complicated question. Younger learners, and

those who are just starting to learn English are likely to make many mistakes in
their writing, and when our students get their work back from the teacher it can
seem very disheartening to find that there are many errors to correct. One way to
avoid this is limit the type of errors you are correcting. If you are using a
course book, or a writing skills book with your students then it can also work as a
guide for your error correction.

Let�s say you are working through Oxford Skills World with your students, unit by
unit they will be learning new writing skills, and these are the areas that we
should focus on in our marking. So, if they are learning how to use full stops and
capital letters in unit one, then when we take their writing homework in we would
correct only the mistakes connected to this skill. When the student has corrected
these errors, you can choose to move onto another type of mistake for the second
draft, or save other error types for a later piece of writing. You can change the
number of error types you look at per draft depending on the needs of your students
and the class objectives.

Recommended Reading

Finally, several of you asked for some recommended reading and books for further
information. If you are looking for guidance for teachers, then the OUP ELT blog is
a great place to start! You will find plenty of interesting and useful articles
right here, like Gareth Davies article Making the �Impossible� Possible � How to
get your students writing or Philip Haines� 25 Alternatives to Reading Aloud
Around the Class.

There are also plenty of great professional development books available with ideas
for improving your students reading and writing. I really like the Into the
Classroom series from OUP, as it has plenty of practical activities which are easy
to use in class.

Thank you again to those of you who attended the webinars, and good luck with your
reading and writing!

Charlotte Rance is a freelance teacher trainer and consultant based in Brighton.

She has worked in the English Language Teaching industry for over a decade, and has
worked in China and Turkey, as well as her native UK, where she completed her
Diploma in TESOL at the University of Brighton. Charlotte�s key areas of interest
are young learners and the use of reading as a tool for language learning.

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Categories: Professional Development, Teenagers, Young Learners | Tags: Reading,
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29 December 2017
by Oxford University Press ELT
6 Comments
Creating Extension Activities
Extension activities
This year�s Headway Scholarship task is to create an extension activity for your
class. To get you started, here are some ideas for creating some good quality
extension activities.

From a quick activity to fill in the last 5-10 minutes of class, to a review game,
or even a full-blown project; extension activities are a way to further the
learning aims for a lesson. For this reason, extension activities should always
have a clear link to the activities which have come before.

Before starting, decide on the aim of your extension activity. An aim could be:

To give students more practice with a grammar structure or vocabulary because they
haven�t quite �got it� yet
To explore a particular topic further
To review material from the lesson or unit
To assess where students are in their learning
Whatever the aim, be sure to link the activity to the language, skills or topic
that you want to extend, assess or review.

Personalise it � An extension activity is a good way for students to relate the

topic to themselves. In this way, the topic becomes more relevant and can make
communication about the topic more meaningful. Students also tend to remember more
when the language or topic is personalised. A simple extension activity would be to
ask students their opinion about a topic: What do you think about�? Do you agree
with�? Which do/would you prefer�? What would you do about�? More extensive
activities might include students creating a set of questions and interviewing
their partner, writing a personal response to a topic, or taking their own photos
and creating an oral narrative using an app such as �fotobabble�.
Integrate higher order thinking skills � Thinking skills can be categorised into
lower-order (remembering, understanding, applying) and higher-order (analysing,
evaluating and creating). If students have been learning vocabulary, they have most
likely been learning the definition (remembering), seeing the new words in context
(understanding), and completing gapped sentences with the words (applying). An
analysing extension activity might ask students to categorise the new words (you
can provide the categories, or students could create their own categories), or you
might ask students to compare the words to other words � for example, finding
synonyms and deciding what the difference in nuance is between the words. If the
words are used in a reading or listening text, you could ask students why certain
words or phrases were used (evaluating). Students might also use the words
creatively � in writing their own sentences (creating).
Review regularly. Hermann Ebbinghaus famously showed how much we forget over time,
and how memory can improve with regular revision. Have a set of extension
activities for the purpose of review in your teacher�s toolkit. Flashcards,
revision games, spelling games, and pronunciation activities are all examples of
extensions for quick revision. An extension activity can also serve to review what
has come before in previous units.
Give some choice � All classes have a mix of students with different abilities and
strengths, so it�s a good idea to give students options to choose from according to
what they feel they can do. For example, you might want students to show their
understanding of a text. One option could be to write a summary (more language
needed), another might be to create an infographic or timeline (less language
needed). Another way to increase choice and provide differentiated instruction is
to vary how much students have to produce. For example, you could ask students to
write 1-3 true sentences about themselves and 1 false one. They then read their
sentences to each other and guess which one is false.
Have some time extenders up your sleeve � for when you finish your lesson plan and
still have 5-10 minutes left, or when you have fast finishers. Some standard
activities include: (1) Students write 1-3 questions or sentences using the grammar
structure they�ve been studying; (2) Pairs write 3-5 gapped sentences with the
vocabulary from the section. They swap with another pair and complete each other�s
sentences; (3) Students work in pairs � each student changes 5 words in a reading
text. Student A begins reading the text. When student B hears a word that is
different from what is in the text, s/he says, �stop�, quotes the word from the
text, and then takes over reading where student A left off.
Integrate an informal assessment � An extension activity might simply be a way to
informally assess whether students have grasped the language or skill aim of the
lesson. One way to do this is with �can do�� statements. Write a list of �can dos�
based on your lesson aim on the board for students to copy. For example, if the aim
of the lesson is �Students will be able to order a meal from a menu.�, then the
�can do� statement might be: �I can order a meal from a menu�. Students tick � the
things they feel they can do. You can then discuss these or collect them up. No
ticks = need revision. Another simple assessment is a �ticket out the door�. If,
for example, you have been working on a certain language point, you could ask
students to write 3 sentences using that language. These are collected up and used
to assess whether or not you need to spend more time on the language point in
subsequent lessons.
Make it different, interactive or just plain fun. Extension activities that focus
on interaction or competition can be very engaging, and can make a change from the
norm. Try some team competitions that focus on language, skills or topics. One
time-honoured example is a grammar auction, in which teams �buy� sentences they
think are correct. Teachers can also create board games based on language in the
units, or play an on-line quiz using an app such as Quizlet.
Turn it into a project � Projects are a great way to integrate a number of skills,
including the 21st century skills of communication, collaboration, critical
thinking and creativity. They also cater for mixed abilities because students can
do them at their own language level. Projects should start with a question that
gets students interested in finding out more. At this point, they may ask more
questions or make hypotheses. Students should then do some research to find out the
answers to their questions. Research can include surveys, interviews or internet
searches. You could even invite a knowledgeable speaker into the classroom. Once
they have done their research, students then decide how they will show it. What is
important here is that they present their finished product to an audience � another
class, the whole school, the headmaster, or parents, for example. When planning a
project, think of the aims and work backwards.
If you would like to try some of the ideas above with your students, download my
�try this in class� document for even more activity ideas and tips.

If you are interested in creating your own Headway extension activity to enter the
Headway Scholarship 2018, and win an all-expenses paid place on the two-week
English Language Teachers� Summer Seminar at Oxford University next summer, click
here take a look at my Headway sample entry form, and check out my video
explanation below.

Find out more about the Headway Scholarship 2018 here. The competition closes on
February 12th 2018, so do get your entries in as soon as you can. Good luck!

Stacey Hughes works as a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and educational
consultant in ELT. She has taught English in the US, Poland, Italy and the UK in
many different contexts, and currently volunteers as a teacher for FELLOW in
Oxford. She has recently run an introduction to teacher training course for the
Oxford Department of Education Summer School. Stacey has written a number of blogs,
online student exercises and teacher support materials.

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