Developing reading skills of learners with specialeducational needs

All teachers are short of time but including learners with SENs in your class should not involve a lot of extra planning. It will involve planning for different learning styles, thinking about the interests and strengths of your learners, including some variations of task type and careful presentation of the work. However, this type of planning will improve the learning of all the learners in your class. It can actually save you time if more learners engage in the work at an earlier stage and with better results. In order to have an inclusive society, we all need to learn more about the difficulties and differences of others. Teachers can learn a lot from learners with SENs and schools need to learn to adapt their teaching and mindset to promote inclusion. For example, instead of looking for a specialist to work with the child, the specialist could help with training for teachers to better understand ways to work with the child. In order to develop reading skills we have taken an article from the newspaper “ Do not pass go, Do not collect 152 $” and have designed the following tasks.

An authentic reading text is taken  from the  newspaper, this article could be successfully exploited to help develop students’ reading skills. Bearing in mind the needs and interests of the students I suppose, that the text under consideration is suitable for my current TP students. In general language in the material is appropriate for our students’ level, occasionally in the text we encounter some separate words of C2 level, B2 level, but still the majority of words correspond to B1 level. This fact proves suitability of the text for learners’ level, as I’m teaching intermediate level students. Thus this text has a balance between real English on the one hand and students’ capability and interest on the other. The text is about money and students usually find this topic interesting to discuss.  As a practicing teacher, I find it useful to incorporate authentic texts to add variety to our lessons and provide learners with exposure to a broader range of text types. It also prepares students to deal with texts they might need to understand outside class in real life.  It is important to engage and motivate the students in the subject area. Using newspapers for intensive reading has no limits to activities and we can take advantage of it and use as an incentives for productive skills (Harmer, 2007,p. 100). Word count is 376 words, which is a quite realistic for the students at this level.

As Harmer suggests, to engage students, activate schemata and to provide them with a good reason to read further I will start with the following lead-in. Learners will be asked to guess the content of the text about Lance and the bank from two pictures which are chosen as  illustrations for the text (Harmer, 2007, p. 271). In small groups students brainstorm ideas. Finally, students come up with oral predictions. This task will be continued in further reading for gist part.

I will encourage students to read for gist without understanding each word, but then pre-teach some necessary blocking vocabulary, restricting them to time limit of 5 minutes. I think it would be useful to pre-teach the following words: repercussion, envisaged, to defraud, to decline and conversion rate. Teacher elicits the answers and provides CCQs as necessarily.

I have chosen to focus on reading for gist skills because the abilities to extract the general idea of the text are necessary in real life. This will stimulate students’ confidence, as they will identify the gist of the text without having to understand all words. Students will predict the content of the text using few phrases from the passage (Harmer, 2007, p. 289).  For this purpose, I will give each student in the class letters from A to E and show them different phrases and words, such as : ‘ a 10, 000 yen note/ the National Bank/ 13 year old boy/ police officer/ to defraud.’ I will project on the WB the title of the text: “Do not pass go, do not collect $151”. Then I will put the students in groups of five, each composed of students A-E. By discussing they predict content according to the given key words from the text. I will instruct the students to make at least two statements predicting the context. This time teacher elicits their predictions and puts them on the board to use them later. Students quickly read the text to see if their predictions were correct. Teacher encourages learners to skim the text by setting the time limit of one minute, because this time students have to read quickly and get the gist of a passage. After reading the text, students discuss their answers in groups of five. Teacher elicits the answers- if their guesses were correct or not, and ticks or crosses out the information on the board accordingly. 

In order to develop reading for specific information skills students read the text in 5-7 minutes to answer wh- questions. Focus of the most of these questions is the text attack skill, which bring to the understanding the text as a whole (Nuttall, 2012, p.184).

 Read the text again and answer the questions.

1. What did Lance find in his bedroom? (10.000 Yen note)
2. How much money was Lance offered in the first bank? (15 dollars)
3. How much money did Lance receive for the note?( 151,20 dollars)
4. What kind of items did Lance buy?( a tape, a soft drink and a wedding present)
5. Who was waiting for a boy at principal’s office? (a police officer)
6. What was the National Bank’s response when parents refused to pay?( nothing/ the bank declined to comment)

I’ve composed those reading questions to suit my reason for focusing on some specific aspects of the text; order of tasks progresses is from general to specific questions. Students have to read quickly and find specific pieces of information. Finding the specific items of information from the text is a key aspect of this task and it facilitates this sub-skill as students develop the skills for scanning for specific information.

I shall also be suggesting ways to use the text as a basis for a productive follow-up speaking activity for fluency. In order to personalize the information from the text students discuss the following questions:

1. Was the development of the story surprising for you? Why?
2. Have you ever had an experience like this one?
3. What would you do if your children or family members found a high value foreign note?

According to Scrivener, this activity involves skills in ways very similar to those in the outside world (Scrivener, 2005, p 32).  Students work in pairs and discuss questions in 5-6 minutes. In the end as feedback teacher elicits their ideas. Learners discuss the story immediately after reading without notes it encourages fluent speaking. The topic of the text is culturally appropriate for the group of learners, as in these activity students have a chance for personalization. This follow up activity is targeting for speaking and the outcomes will be in terms of developing learners’ communicative skills and fluency. 

Bibliography:

1. Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language, Nuttall, C., 2005, Macmillan
2. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Harmer, J., 2007, Pearson Education Limited
3. Learning Teaching, Scrivener, J., 2005, Macmillan
4. Developing Reading Skills, Grellet, F., 1981, CUP
5. Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language, Nuttall, C., 2005, Macmillan

Yeleussiz Aigul Beibitkyzy

The branch of JSC NCPD “Orleu”,

Institute for Professional Development of Zhambyl region,

senior teacher