Graded readers: adapted stories for any level, age or interest

I've wanted to write this post about 'readers' for a long time, since one of the pillars of learning (as I'll explain in my next book) is reading, even though we live in a somewhat complicated time regarding this subject. 

As you know, reading is the number one source of independent access to knowledge, and it is no coincidence that the first years of compulsory education are devoted to learning this basic skill. Mastery of any language, mother tongue and non mother tongue, after a first approach made of listening and speaking, passes through the acquisition, use and practice of new words, or vocabulary, and grammatical expressions.

In the practice of teaching English as a second language, ESL, (or Foreign Language, EFL) in addition to the school's grammar and vocabulary textbooks, it is fundamental, in my opinion, to use graduated readings for these different reasons:
 - First, because they present vocabulary and grammar in context, which allows an almost osmotic assimilation of them.
  -  Second, because these books always come with a CD or an audio track that helps learn the correct pronunciation of words as well as get the ear accustomed to different accents and speed of speech.
  - Third, because they provide a wide range of conversational topics: from summarizing a chapter to practice verb tenses and vocabulary, to expressing opinions on events, passing through an analysis of the differences between the social and historical context described in the text and the current one.
   - Fourth, and finally, because each reader also proposes reading comprehension exercises similar to those found in the most important official exams such as Cambridge and Trinity.

I personally tend to use them quite a lot, from the second/third year of primary school if my students attend a bilingual school or from the fourth/fifth year of primary school in the case of students attending non-bilingual schools, because at some point the conversation topics start to be always the same and, secondly, to avoid spending an hour translating* what children can't express for their lack of vocabulary when I want to work on their speaking skills.Naturally I have a couple of favorite reader collections that I usually use depending on my students' tastes: the Oxford Read and Imagine collection from level 3 (Cambridge Starters/Movers), which provides the audio tracks in British and American English, and CIDEB's Green Apple adapted classics collection.

I usually use them for their aesthetic attractiveness, because they come with many images that at the same time support reading comprehension, and for the exercises that they propose, because in addition to questions about the text, they deepen other aspects such as the life of the author or the socioeconomic context, they propose research projects and interactive online activities.But the most important thing is that depending on the level, they propose topics that coincide with the English, social and natural school textbooks, and therefore they become another tool for strengthening language acquisition.More than once it has happened to me that, reviewing the lesson of the day, I have come to ask my students: do you remember that we saw this in that book? This circumstance seems of little importance, but, in fact, getting a student to connect the concepts of one book with those of another means leading him to reorganize his previous knowledge with the new one and therefore to generate significant learning, which is the ultimate goal of any teaching.

*The effectiveness of having a human translator when learning languages has not yet been scientifically proven ;)

More about reading:
Reading as a game
How to make children love reading

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Blending: first steps towards reading

Hi there! The public examination to become a Primary school teacher is behind the corner here in Spain. That means that studying along with working leaves little free time to write blog posts. However today I have decided to take a break and here I am to tell you how the Jolly Phonics course proceeds.

Back from the holidays we finished the second group of sounds /c/ /k/ /e/ /h/ /m/ /r/ /d/ and started the third. At the same time I decided that it was time to start blending and I'm going to tell you how I decided to introduce it. But first I'll explain what blending is and how it influences the acquisition of reading and writing skills.

We know that the main objective of the synthetic phonics methodology is to teach how to associate phonemes (sounds) to graphemes (graphic sign). At first, they are taught one by one, and then they are joined together to form words. For example, once the vowel phonemes, such as /a/ /i/ /e/ /o/ /u/, and some consonant phonemes, such as /p/ /n/ /c/ and /t/, are seen, students are presented with words formed by the combination of these phonemes: pan, sit, ant, cat, cap, net, pet, nut, and so on. Blending is the process of pronouncing the sounds of a word individually and finally bringing them together to pronounce the whole word. That is: /p/, /a/, /n/ and children have to say the whole word -> pan.

At first it may be difficult for them to recognize the word, but with a little practice during every session their ability improves, and each time they gather the phonemes faster.

How do I do it? As my little group is very lively, at the moment, to be listened to for more than 8 seconds, I'm using Jolly Phonics Read and See books. They are small books where there are words followed by a flap that I only lift once the children have guessed which word they have just heard, underneath there is the image that corresponds to the word pronounced. It's a trick that keeps them attentive because of the surprise effect, which always works with younger children, and thanks to the attention they naturally pay, they learn.

Another material that I use are the Jolly Phonics flash cards and some cards that I have cut from the activity books I had at home. I do try to make sure that the word is always accompanied by the corresponding picture; first of all because it develops reading comprehension and then because the drawings are pretty and, as Maria Montessori said, children have to be given pretty things to create an affective link with learning.

And now, the big question... why do we teach them blending?
I suppose the answer has already been guessed right: once the children have learned to recognize the words broken down by the teacher, they will be equipped to start synthesizing words on their own, which means they will be able to read.

More about reading and writing.

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Rhyme Robber: the game that helps children improve their listening skills

Today I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite board games: Rhyme Robber.It's produced by Orchard Toys, the British company I mentioned in a previous post,  and it's a perfect filler for these last hot days of school.

The most remarkable ESL purpose of this game is to develop listening skills at a very young age through sound recognition and rhyming skills, which, as I already wrote here, are crucial in order to build effective communication skills as adults.

In the game box you'll find 4 rhyme robber boards showing a child with a robber's swag bag (1 for each player), 48 rhyme cards and a rhyme guide board, where all the pictures and their respective words are grouped by rhyming sounds and colors.

Each player is given two cards, which they hold in their hands without showing to anybody else, then 4 more cards are placed face up in the centre of the table, while the rest of the cards are left face down in a pile next to these.

The youngest player starts and if they are holding a card that rhymes with one of the four cards in the centre of the table, then they can take the matching card while saying, for example, 'rake rhymes with lake', and put both cards face up on top of their robber board in their character's swag bag. If the next player has in their hand a card that matches a card on another player's board, they can choose to take that one, instead of one from the centre of the table. In any case once a player puts down a card, they have to take another one from the pile so that they are always holding two cards. The game ends  when all 48 cards have been stolen or no more cards can be stolen.
 
The game is especially effective with preschoolers and first graders straight out of the box: you'll only have to be there to read the names under the pictures out loud to help children recognize the rhyming sounds. Very small kids won't love the fact that other players can steal their cards so I'd suggest not insisting that they follow that rule, especially since we should focus on the development of listening skills more than anything else.
 
Once I noticed that older kids have stronger rhyming skills I suggested an extension of the game: through reading rhyming books I encouraged my students to look for new rhyming word families which they would then copy onto paper, cut out in circles, and added to the basic game in order to make it last longer.

My students' favorite books are ones written by Dr Seuss, the author of Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who! and many more, as well as others by Julia Donaldson such as The Gruffalo, What the Ladybird Heard, Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale,  A Squash and a Squeeze among others.

Click on the links to Orchard Toys, Seussville and Julia Donaldson websites to entertain your childish soul as much as it needs :)

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Modeling: teaching positive attitudes towards learning

Long time no see! At last a Sunday off and some time for blogging!

Illustrator: rinapiccolo.com

You see, after 8 years teaching extracurricular English classes, last year I decided that it was time to get an actual teaching degree from an actual university, so I signed up for one! As a result, over the past few months I've had zero time to write anything… until today :)

The classes have definitely been interesting and quite useful, but my favorite subject, above all, was educational psychology, where I realized that over the last 8 years I've been applying the most modern educational theories without even knowing it. Somehow, through my personal experience as a student in addition to observing and analyzing my students to enhance their learning experience, I've been putting into practice theories I had been unfamiliar with until October.

It has been reassuring and encouraging at the same time to discover that others have scientifically proven things I have experienced almost daily. Actually, while I was in class I couldn't help sharing my classroom stories… though I'm not sure how much the teacher appreciated it!

Anyway, today I'd like to talk about one particular topic from those educational psychology classes: observational learning.

Do you remember that campaign with the slogan "Children see, children do"?
Well, between the phrase children see and the phrase children do, we could definitely add a third phrase: children learn.

Observational learning, or modeling, is part of the Social Learning Theory developed by Albert Bandura, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Bandura demonstrated that children learn and imitate behaviors they have observed in other people through his Bobo doll experiment, which shows how a child reproduces the same  aggressive behavior he has observed.

There are 4 important steps involved in the modeling process:

- Attention, which is connected to your interest in what you're seeing and the lack of possible distractions.
- Retention, which is the capacity to store information, usually facilitated by seeing and listening to how to do something.
- Reproduction is the phase that starts once you've retained the information and understood the process. It's the time when the child performs the observed behavior. Their performance will improve and lead to skill advancement through further practice.
- Motivation is essential for successful observational learning and it can be generated by using positive or negative reinforcement. This also includes punishment, but it's not a desiderable way of going about it.

It sounds a bit like my method, doesn't it?  ;) Not only that, but it also sounds like how a Montessori teacher does it when they explains to their students how to use the prepared material.

As adults, it's clear that we can choose to use this process to encourage more positive behaviour from the young people around us, and this is also why I always insist that parents and teachers must be an active part of the process. In fact, I even wrote a book about it!

If you want your kids to read, let them see that you like reading; open a book, talk to them about what you're reading, and take them to a library.

If you want your children to learn English, take part in the process with them. If they're shy don't force them to speak if you're not making the same effort, because then they will just ask you why they have to when you don't.

Do you want your students to care for environment? Start by caring for it yourself, showing them how to do it.

When I started my first internship at a school in January, I bought one of those notebooks with the big squares that first graders use to write in so that I could practice my primary school calligraphy.

Every day, I made sure to use it in front of them, showing them my improvement, and asking them how they wrote this or that letter. Judging by their amazed expressions every time I took the notebook out of my bag, I'm pretty sure that, many of them paid much more attention to how they were writing and tried to improve the legibility of their writing just because they felt that their own effort to produce legible calligraphy was being understood and appreciated,

In conclusion, the learning process is a team effort and if you have a tricky issue in your own classroom, this process can be modified to help you deal with it.

If you'd like to take a deeper look  at the subject, here's a link to a more exhaustive explanation and another video about the Bobo doll experiment.

Meanwhile, have fun!

P.S. I got a really good grade on the Educational Psychology exam ;)

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