1/5/24, 16:09 How Graded Readers and Engaging Activities Can Ignite Student Interest in the Magic of Books

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How Graded Readers and Engaging Activities Can

Ignite Student Interest in the Magic of Books

Oxford University Press ELT

26 April 2024

Reading, Writing, Listening, & Speaking Uncategorized

If contemporary societies view reading as an essential life skill, loving to read is definitely
“the” gift that makes all the difference in a person’s life.

Reading for pleasure opens doors to all sorts of worlds for us to explore. When we are
hooked on a story, we feel like we have jumped into the book’s pages to undergo an exciting
reading experience. Times flies, our imagination goes riot, we are curious to know how the
story unfolds, the words are full of powerful meaning and new words and expressions
expand our linguistic repertoire. Likewise, when the story ends, we may even have a book
hangover! Suddenly, we find it difficult to part in the company of those characters we’ve
learned to love. Luckily, there is always another book around the corner, waiting for us to
open it and read “Once Upon a Time…”, to make the magic happen all over again.

The powerful stories that circulate in our communities build bridges among generations, and
readers develop a strong sense of belonging to their cultures and values. What is more, we
remember information which comes in the form of a story because we connect with the
narrative emotionally. Myths and legends are examples of how, in the past, we used to
make sense of the world we lived in (Egan, 1998). Stories bring together schools and
families. Just imagine parents and children reading together about the adventures of
emblematic characters such as Sherlock Holmes, drawing the wall a selfish giant built
around his castle, performing the gingerbread man’s traditional story or chanting Humpty

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Dumpty or Dr Seuss’ cat in the hat’s rhymes. As Brewster, Ellis and Girard (2002) say, stories
and storytelling create the ideal learning context to undergo reading as a social experience.

Creative Reading as Classroom Practice

Let me introduce creative reading as classroom practice and show how it can be fun,
engaging and memorable. We need three things: Developing reading routines, choosing
appropriate graded readers and following a pre-, while- and post-reading model.

1. Reading Routines

Reading routines such as regular storytelling, reading aloud / reading alone time and book
talk moments give learners the chance to express their personal response to the reading
experience (Mourao & Ellis, 2021). In this way, we create communities of readers which
make reading visible in the classroom with cosy reading corners and comfy cushions,
shelves with books to read for pleasure and classroom walls decorated with the learners’
creative work which show reading in the making.

2. Graded Readers

Do not be scared to add a graded reader to your syllabus! These texts come from many
different genres and teachers have a big palette to choose what topics to explore.

Graded readers are accessible to all. Their benefits are plenty. First, they are specifically
produced for foreign language learners and use limited lexis and syntax according to the
learners’ linguistic level. As students read to their reading ability, their motivation increases,
and they develop a sense of achievement. For many students, this can be the first time they
read a whole book in English! What a feeling of success, don’t you think?

Second, the graded readers’ appealing content triggers motivation. There are several
abridged versions of all sorts of genres, such as folk and fairy tales, fables, traditional
stories and modern classics with lively illustrations accompanying robust plots.[1] Choosing
stories from around the world, for example, is a solid plan, since learners have access to
world literature in their English class, learn and explore different cultures and human
expression, gain global perspective and develop a broader worldview. Isn’t it fantastic?[2]

3. Following a Pre-, While- and Post-Reading Model

Planning a lesson on a graded reader is simpler than you think. By following a pre-, while-
and post-reading model which organizes the lesson around three main stages, we will
integrate graded readers into our syllabuses and exploit the full potential of the stories. We
will exemplify activities which intend to inspire teachers to design creative tasks to
accompany the reading experience since planning appealing activities for each stage is
crucial to motivating learners to develop an interest in the story.[3]

First, as a pre-reading activity, we can bring realia into the classroom and show learners 5
different objects they can touch and play with. We tell them that only one of those objects
appears in the story and ask them to look at the cover of the book to guess which one
belongs to the story and give reasons for their choice. For the pre-reading phase, we can
use the think-pair-share (TPS) collaborative learning strategy to foster interaction[4]. In this

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way, we are creating expectations about the story, we have made learning concrete with
real objects, and we have given learners a specific task to carry out and reasons for
listening/reading. Now the learners are motivated to listen to/read the story to confirm or
discard their predictions.

Reading activities foster storytelling and interactive reading moments to trigger

imagination, involve the learners in the narrative and play with sound, rhythm, and rhyme.
This playful interaction with English sounds and rhythm has a very positive effect on
memory building and language learning. The same happens with book talk moments which
bring the learners’ own imagined or real worlds into the reading and create precious
opportunities for spontaneous listening and speaking in the classroom in relaxed classroom
practice. Storybooks and storytelling, as a social experience, create a rich environment for
learning (Brewster, Ellis and Girard, 2002).

Last, post-reading activities nurture the learners’ connection with the story and respond
creatively to the reading experience. Examples of these activities are: Draw your favourite
scene, design an infographic with specific information about the story, use a graphic
organizer to create a story mountain to represent its structure, perform the scenes you liked
the most, create a collage to introduce a character, create a story cube to retell the story,
design a different book cover or book jacket, create a poster to advertise the book, write a
different ending, add a new character, do freeze frames to present the different scenes.

Sometimes, just introducing a slight minimal change to traditional reading activities is

enough to trigger immediate interest. For example, completing a Venn diagram with specific
information about two different elements is very often used for identifying, categorizing,
comparing and contrasting information. When we add movement to the activity, learners
have another stimulus. If we ask students to create the activity in pairs to pass it on to other
learners to complete it, the challenge, engagement and enthusiasm grow since it becomes
community-based. See the following example of an activity I created based on the primary
course book series Buzz, book 6 (2023, p. 25)

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Beyond the Classroom Walls

Moreover, for those teachers who embrace creative reading and would like to go a step
further, participating in international reading projects is a great option since these projects
move beyond the classroom walls and bring together learners from faraway places. Oxford
University Press, for example, carries out one such project every year: the Oxford Big Read
competition[5] and provides online access to several resources, such as ready-to-use
templates, genre information, rubrics to assess creative tasks and teaching tips to guide
teachers to plan creative activities to work with graded readers.

Participating in global projects like Oxford Big Read offers schools the chance to show their
commitment to teaching languages and gain international visibility and recognition. The
whole school community participates in making these projects happen; families and
teachers work together in collaborative contexts to support the learners’ efforts, involving
parents in their children’s learning processes and schools in creating bonds with the
learners’ homes. Most importantly, these kinds of creative reading experiences boost
students’ love for reading, language learning, sharing with others and exercising agency.

Creative Reading in a Nutshell

To conclude, creative reading fosters a comprehensive language learning experience, which
creates room for learners to explore and experiment with language from a very personal
and creative perspective. It contributes to developing learners’ confidence in their reading
process, in the learning of a foreign language, and the development of their creativity and
criticality.[6]

It is about loving to read and invites readers to let themselves go, be caught by the power of
the narrative, develop empathy and engage their imagination in the reading process. It aims
at educating learners, who have acquired tools to become critical, creative and independent
readers, aware of their citizenship responsibilities, both at their local contexts and globally.
All in all, be a daring teacher and give graded readers a chance!

____________________________________________________________________________________
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Griselda Beacon is an English teacher with a Master’s degree in English Literature and
Foreign Language Teaching from Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany. She has
extensive experience in teacher training and curriculum development for primary school. She
is the co-author of the Together textbook series (Oxford UP, 2018) for teaching English in
Argentina and co-editor of the book International Perspectives on Diversity in ELT (Palgrave,

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2021). She is a teacher trainer for various educational institutions, including Oxford UP in
South America and NILE – Norwich Institute for Language Education in England. Passionate
about children’s literature, Griselda visits schools, reads picture books, tells stories, and
carries out literary projects in primary school classrooms with literature and art that
promote reading and creative writing, intercultural dialogue, and inclusion in English
lessons. Based in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Griselda works as a higher education
teacher and teaches Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Creativity, and Theater
Techniques in the English teacher training program.

Bibliographical references
Brewster, J., Ellis, G. & Girard, D. (2002). The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Pearson ED

Douglas, S. R. (2017). Extensive reading for engaging learners beyond the textbook. Blog.
Oxford University Press ELT.
https://teachingenglishwithoxford.oup.com/2017/07/18/extensive-reading-the-key-to-
language-learning-beyond-the-classroom/

Egan, K. (1998). The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. In
Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l education. Bibliovault OAI
Repository, the University of Chicago Press. 68. 10.2307/1585992.

Mahony, M. & J. Ross (2023). Buzz, book 6. Oxford University Press.

Mourão, S., & Ellis, G. (2021). Demystifying the read-aloud. English Teaching Professional,
(136), 22-25. Article 7. https://www.etprofessional.com/demystifying-the-read-aloud

Websites
https://www.oxfordbigread.com/

https://www.oxfordreadingclub.com/

https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/think-pair-share

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/knowing
subject/articles/making-reading-communicative

[1] See Oxford University Press selection of graded readers at

https://www.oxfordreadingclub.com/

[2]https://teachingenglishwithoxford.oup.com/2017/07/18/extensive-reading-the-key-to-
language-learning- beyond-the-classroom/

[3]https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/knowing
subject/articles/making-reading-communicative
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[4]https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/think-pair-share

[5] For more information about this global project, see https://www.oxfordbigread.com/

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