Classroom Strategies to Develop Reading Skills

In this blog, I will share two of my favorite reading skill strategies that have been very effective in my ESL classroom. I will share the steps of implementing these strategies, the target population, and the rationale and benefits of implementing these reading strategies in an ESL classroom. It is very important that teachers use effective ESL reading strategies to help ESL students develop competent reading skills that will help them foster a solid literacy foundation.

Strategy: Guide Reading

Target Population (The Stages of Second Language Acquisition): Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, Advanced Fluency

Age: Younger- Middle Grade Learners

Setting: Small Group

Steps to Implement:

Teacher groups students based on similar reading levels.
Teacher works with a small group of students and guides them through the reading process.
Teacher selects stories or other reading material that is at the students’ instructional reading level.
Teacher provides individual help to students, as they read aloud based on their own unique needs/reading skill.
The teacher scaffolds each student as they read and models decoding and comprehension strategies.
After students are finished reading, the teacher can ask questions to ensure that the text has been comprehended.
Guided reading can be modified for students in all grade levels. For older students, the teacher can teach strategies for reading different types of text such as informational/expository, argumentative, or technical.

Rationale and Benefits:

Guided reading is beneficial because it helps students build fluency.
By engaging in guided reading, students learn reading strategies that cater to their unique reading needs.
Students learn strategy that facilitates reading and comprehending for more difficult texts.
They learn to apply strategies to decode unfamiliar word and learn to use their prior knowledge to make connection to the text, which can enhance their reading comprehension skill.
Students also practice their oral skills through engaging in conversation about the text.
Guided reading helps students expand vocabulary knowledge and apply strategies such as context clues to help them figure out the meaning of unknown words.

Strategy: Readers’ Theater

Target Population (The Stages of Second Language Acquisition): Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, Advanced Fluency

Age: All Learners

Setting: Small Group, Whole Group

Steps to Implement:

The teacher selects an appropriate story to implement Readers’ Theater.
The story should have several characters to enable more students to participate.
The story should be brief and include a clear beginning, middle, and end.
The teacher reads the story to the students and models diction, dramatization, and expression.
Teacher and students analyze the story and its elements.
Teacher assigns parts and makes sure that all students have a script.
Students highlight their part and rehearse.
Students can wear simple costumes and create props such as masks to use while they are performing.
Students use scripts during performance.
As students become intermediate-level, readers’ theater can be modified and they can write their own scripts from their favorite stories.

Rationale and Benefits:

Students benefit greatly from reader’s theater because this helps them develop fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Readers’ Theater helps students build fluency and increases their decoding skills.
It allows student the opportunity to engage in cooperative learning, which is a researched-based strategy to help ELL learn effectively.
Since students don’t need to memorize their line/s they are developing their oral language skills in a low anxiety environment.
Readers’ Theater is a fun activity that allows students to actively learn and experience the story.
Repeated readings and rehearsals of the script aid students in developing vocabulary and comprehension skills.
Readers’ Theater improves students’ self-confidence while reading aloud.