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 For many years, teachers who have enjoyed using graded readers with their school-age students, have regretted that most graded readers are intended for younger learners. They were either traditional fairy stories or adapted classics from literature. Now the Penguin Readers catalogue contains a treasure chest of stimulating materials for all age groups.
Here are some suggestions to encourage your students to read in English.
 Class library
The easiest form of exploitation is to make a class library of books at a suitable level which students simply borrow and read at their leisure. However, this can be extended to a 'Book Club' in which students select their own books and give a short presentation (in English) about the book to the class. This is a good way to develop confidence in both reading and speaking. |
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Practical ideas
When students have read a few graded readers, you can ask them to write and illustrate their own graded narratives.
 Newspaper stories can be a good stimulus. Each student selects a 'human interest' story from the newspaper and after studying the text, turns it into a short, illustrated, narrative text.
Alternatively, after a lesson in which students have spoken about their own experiences, they can be asked to turn those experiences into graded readers.
Students may choose to work individually or in small groups.
Students should be encouraged to produce their graded readers in booklet form, either by hand or using computers. As you can imagine, this work involves very careful reading, writing and editing - all useful skills for language learners.
The books created by the students can, of course, be used as graded reading material by other students. After reading a book. encourage your students to write a review. You can do this in class or for homework. |
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Action
Another form of creative adaptation is to turn a graded reader into a radio play. Students working in groups turn the story (or a scene) from a graded reader into dialogue form and then record the dialogue, adding perhaps music and sound effects.
 In the Penguin Readers catalogue there are many books which 'retell' the story of a famous film. These are particularly good for adapting to a radio play format. More ambitious students could also attempt to make stories into video films.
In both these cases, the learning value of the task comes from the process of creating the product, but the final sound recording or video can be enjoyed by other students.
For more ideas, go to the Reading Room.
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