Evidence-Based Praise for Adolescent Students Struggling with EFL Reading Comprehension Tasks

Some need extra attention…   Naomi’s Photos

Raise your hand if you have high school students in your EFL class who:

* have a shockingly limited vocabulary.

* have trouble matching upper case / lower case letters (which makes using the electronic dictionary much harder).

* you suspect can’t really decode.

* still seem surprised (STUNNED) that you expect them to sit down and be ready for a lesson with actual pencils, notebooks, and books when the bell rings.

* take one look at a text and give up immediately – they can’t even look at it, they totally believe they can’t deal with it. They don’t even want to try.

Hmm, it seems we may face some of the same problems with our struggling EFL students in high-school.

The same students we are supposed to prepare for their national final exams…

Epstein family photos

“But this bridge will only take you halfway there–

The last few steps you’ll have to take alone”.

From “This Bridge by Shel Silverstein” 

I visualize most of my teaching work as a bridge that can lead the students up to the point where they are able to take the last steps alone and be independent. The students take the hand that I have offered and we walk together. That’s why I quote this poem so often on my blog!

However….

There is a problem when it comes to these students.

A BIG problem.

These students aren’t even on the bridge and many of them won’t simply take my hand and let me show them the way. In fact, they have to prove they are right in saying they unable to learn and won’t succeed by resisting help. It’s as if they haven’t heard the maxim “If you are in a hole, stop digging”!

I believe my first job is to get such students on the bridge.

Reading Comprehension strategies are useless to a student who won’t try.

The students know they are weak students, don’t lie to them or praise them in a way that isn’t true. RIG THE SETTING FOR SUCCESS, BUT DON’T LIE! Make sure there is “evidence” as to why the student was praised.

Here are some of the things I do in class to get the students to “step on the bridge” and feel that it is worth giving reading comprehension tasks a try:

Growth can come from unexpected directions…
Naomi’s Photos

Disappearing texts:

I create very simple basic texts on the board from some “tale” a student in class shares. I write the tale in English,  even if the student tells it almost completely in mother-tongue (eliciting words from the other students as much as possible). I focus on expressing a sincere interest in what happened to the student.  Like this text, for example:

What Happened to Sara This Morning?

Sara got up at 06:15.

She left the house at 07:15.

Sara didn’t take an umbrella.

When Sara arrived in Yehud it was raining hard.

Sara got wet.

Sara wants to call her Dad.

By erasing words, having students fill in the relevant missing words on the board in response to basic “WH” questions, I get the students to focus on the text and the words. They know the answers because they were involved in the process of creating the “text”. I finally erase the ENTIRE text and ask WH questions about it. The students can deal with it!

Answering in complete sentences is not the point! If students can answer a “when” question with “07:15” and a “who” question with “Dad” (and not vice a versa!) then I have a good reason to praise them. They are reading and answering questions!

Note: A visual explanation of how to use the disappearing text method with all students can be found in Jason Renshaw’s post, here:  Going Going Gone

There is life!
Naomi’s Photos

“Chopping” Real Exam Papers

The students know as well as I do that their final exams won’t have self-created texts on it. Bringing in a real exam paper from a previous year, chopped into “bite-sized” pieces, makes it easier to “swallow”.

Each paragraph of the text is pasted on a separate page, with only the questions related to that paragraph pasted below it. So now the text is chopped up into several short pages.

On page one there may be only one question but on page two we can show the students that THREE WHOLE QUESTIONS  can be answered based on SIX measly lines!

That is much less intimidating than seeing the whole text and a long page of questions.  Particularly if you highlight the “WH” question words, names and numbers in the text.

A student doesn’t need to answer all the questions to get a high-five  – remember? We’re talking about students who wouldn’t even start working on a text! Lay on the praise for every question answered. Make your check marks extra big!

In it together…
Naomi’s Photos

Divide the Dictionary Work (include the teacher!)

Many of these students gave up on their electronic dictionaries very quickly. Like any tool, you need practice in order to use it quickly and well, yet they won’t touch it. By writing unknown words from a paragraph on the board and dividing the work of looking them up, the students can be convinced to start the laborious process of typing the words they are in charge of.  It is slow work for them because some students have trouble matching lower and uppercase letters and they have to copy every single letter, one at a time. However, the more they do it the easier it will get.

It’s important that the teacher shows that he/she is also contributing to the joint effort and fills in some of the translations. While it’s good for morale, that’s not the point! The teacher chooses to translate the words that have several meanings and writes only the suitable one. The students do have to learn to deal with such an issue, but only after they have begun moving along the “bridge”!

Create your own version of a “Proud of You” board!

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I know that most teachers don’t have the option of having a wall devoted to praising like I do.  I don’t know what you can do instead, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.

“The last few steps you’ll have to take alone” (Shel Silverstein)

 

 

Saturday’s Book: “Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin

Here comes the bride…
Naomi’s Photos

I chose my third and final audiobook for the year on an impulse.  “Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life”, by Steve Martin is not similar to the usual kind of books that I read. Which is exactly why I chose it.  I felt I needed a break from the rather serious books I have recently been reading (more on that later) and thought that listening to a comedian read his own book would be taking full advantage of the medium of audiobooks. Frankly, I imagined that listening to this book would be somewhat like listening to Trevor Noah read “Born a Crime”, which I really enjoyed.

It’s an unfair comparison. Not only did Trevor Noah have a truly unusual childhood, but his book also does an amazing job of showing how people from different cultural backgrounds may perceive events from very different perspectives and what that can lead to.

That’s not Steve Martin’s goal. Once I settled down and began accepting the book for what it was (and to the fact that Martin doesn’t “act out” voices of characters) I rather enjoyed it.  Steve Martin realized early on, the hard way,  that if he waited to be “discovered” at some audition he would never get anywhere. There was none of this “instant stardom” some of my students seem to fantasize about.  He didn’t have any mentors to show him the way and he worked very hard at honing his profession.

In short, a tale of grit.

I also found it very interesting that a comedian “grew” out of a silent, rigid family setting.

I’m not a big fan of “slapstick” humor and mainly watched Martin in movies with my sons when they were younger, but it’s pretty amazing to learn about all that happens, or is needed, in order to seem to be “clowning around.”

Drama, Simple Vocabulary Games & Poetry – A Mix that ROCKS!

Let your imagination run loose!  Naomi’s Photos

 

Sometimes quickly turning inspiration into action, while keeping things really simple, is absolutely the way to go.

This is the first year that I am teaching the poem “As I Grow Older” by Langston Hughes to high school students at several levels, not just to the students at the highest level. I am very pleased by the decision.

The lead-in activity focusing on the metaphor of the wall (and not on giving a historical background) clarified it well for my students. You can find the activity here:  Shifting the Focus of Pre-Reading Tasks

However, my weaker students needed more practice in remembering the vocabulary items used in the poem so that we could focus on analysis and interpretation.

It occurred to me that this was a good time to start trying to put some principles into practice. I’m fortunate to be taking an in-service training course with the fascinating Debbie Ben Tura on the use of drama in EFL lessons (thanks to the awesome Regina Shraybman who brought the course to our school!).

Obviously, I couldn’t read the poem out dramatically in English while groups of students act out the lines they hear. Many of my students this year are quite Deaf and communicate mainly in Sign – Language. However, I did not want to miss out on the connection between acting, movement, and retention.

So here’s what I did.

Quickly.

I took scrap paper and wrote out twelve verses from the poem in large letters. Not beautiful, not laminated, just readable from afar. These pages will be thrown out soon. See here:

Round One

Verses on paper, round one

One student was “the teacher”. Another student was placed in charge of the stopwatch on a cell phone. I explained that each student would mime out each verse on a page, as shown by “the teacher” and the time it took them to do so would be recorded on the board. We agreed that some use of Sign Language would be allowed as long as it was combined with acting dramatically (standing stiffly and just signing was banned).

The students immediately asked for a review of the sentences before we began and I, naturally, was happy to oblige.

The students loved it and were quite creative with ideas. Suddenly a verse like “the wall rose between me and my dream” became a visual creation that the students were physically involved in creating! It was clear that the students were focusing on the verses intently.

The weakest student had the role of playing “teacher” – by the time it was his turn the verses had been acted out five times before with “reminders” in between. He needed some help but felt confident enough to participate.

Round Two

The board – Round Two

The students helped me stick the pages with the verses on the board.

One by one a student came to the board. Each of the other students had to act out two verses (we went around twice) and the student by the board had to point to the sentence being acted out. If they pointed to the wrong sentence I intervened until they found the right one, which of course “cost time”. Again we wrote scores on the board. If someone wanted a review before his /her turn at the whiteboard, the group was able to explain the forgotten items. I didn’t have to do it!

The big pages are now going into the trash bin. I had students copy the verses onto index cards which I plan to use in other ways next week.

Drama, poetry, and vocabulary can be so much fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday’s Book: “The Woman who Smashed Codes” by Fagone

Take the long view…
Naomi’s Photos

The full title of the book is “The Woman who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies”.

This is a fascinating book about Elizabeth Smith Friedman, another extremely intelligent, gutsy woman who played an important role in American history, yet her story hadn’t been told.

I was somewhat apprehensive about reading the book since I’m not mathematically inclined. There are explanations about codes and discussions of codes as that was Elizabeth’s groundbreaking field of expertise. However, that wasn’t a problem at all.  The book is engaging and clear, presenting Elizabeth’s life as it intertwined with government and military history, actually the covert history of a substantial part of the 20th century.  I was particularly interested in the part about South America during World War ll.  I had known almost nothing about the “invisible war” going on there!

It never ceases to amaze me how dual feelings toward women could have existed in such a manner. On one hand, men in key roles and government and the military lined up to consult with Elizabeth, yet giving her due credit or equal pay – forget it…

A great book!