In order to do well on an exam involving a reading comprehension passage, a student learning English as a foreign language must do more than look up translations of unfamiliar words, right? He/She has to THINK about what is being asked and notice the relevant details in the text, right?

Those are certainly  “DUH” questions for any EFL teacher.

But even back in the “good old days“,  before Covid_19, when I used to meet my Deaf and hard of hearing high school students face to face, getting students to really examine the reading comprehension questions carefully, to notice all the helpful hints “hiding in plain sight” in the text, was one of the issues I spent a great deal of time on.  Every time the students and I worked on a text I would highlight certain points, leaving others for another lesson, careful not to “flood” them with too much information at once.

Now that we’re in “distance learning mode”, not only do I have to find ways to adapt my usual explanations to this new way of studying, I also have to contend with Google Translate. Students certainly use it and I can’t blame them.

But I want them to think about some aspects of the text!

So I prepared a guided reading comprehension task in four sections. It is modular so different students can do it at their own pace. I used LiveWorksheets so that the task would be online with interactive options.

The first stage was getting students to look carefully at the title, the first sentence, and all the names and numbers in the text  Students need to be reminded to take advantage of the useful information gained from this simple technique. This was achieved by showing them only this information in the first part of the guided task.

The next two issues I wanted to tackle were much more challenging. My Deaf and hard of hearing students tend to ignore instructions and explanations in general.

And I want them to really READ the questions.

So I kept the explanations as short as I could and just wrote them in L1 (Hebrew).  If someone wishes to translate the Hebrew used in these exercises into Arabic (or any other languages) I would be delighted to provide assistance and post additional versions of these tasks.

More importantly, I used L1 as the first step in making the students examine the multiple-choice questions more carefully. I translated the questions into Hebrew but left out words in the questions.  The students must fill in the missing words, using the translations. They choose from three options.

In addition…

I asked the students “DUH” questions about the questions, before going on to answer the questions.

A student who will happily skip an explanation won’t skip a question.  There are all sorts of examples but here is the most obvious one:

Line 18 mentions “the astonishing qualities” of Manuka honey. Give one of these qualities from another paragraph.

• Line 18 is at the ________(beginning)___________ of paragraph 4.
• The answer to this question __(can not be )____________ from paragraph 4.
• Will reading paragraph 4 help me answer this question? ___(No)____
• The words “give one of” refer to the fact that there is ____(more than one answer) __
• The word “astonishing” refers to ____ (something surprising)

And even more “DUH”…

The students are exposed to the reading passage itself slowly, as relevant.  At certain points, I erased some words in the reading passage,  which they have to fill in using the multiple-choice options. There are no translations, but the words I chose to delete and the options which are given make the correct answer EXTREMELY obvious. But actually stopping to choose these simple words caused the students to slow down and look at the text more than many would have done.

You will find the links to all the sections below.

I hope you find the exercise useful!

• Note: The text used was taken from a 2008 “Bagrut” exam for Module D.  Not all questions appearing in the original exam were used. 

Manuka Honey Part One

https://www.liveworksheets.com/yg213631go

Manuka Honey Part Two

https://www.liveworksheets.com/gp225895gk

Manuka Honey Part Three

https://www.liveworksheets.com/bi286224mk

 Manuka Honey Part Four

https://www.liveworksheets.com/rn287684jh

My Deaf and hard of hearing 11th and 12th-grade students should have been about 3 weeks away from taking their national final matriculation exams.

That was before COVID-19 of course.

Assuming that at some point the students WILL be taking these exams, we will continue to teach online after this holiday break.

My students who struggle the most, going for the lowest level of the exams, need a lot of practice with answering Wh questions about short reading passages.

When I say short I mean short.

These are students who don’t do much without me sitting with them. Distance learning is hitting them the hardest. It will be more effective to use shorter passages.

So the exercises I am sharing below are “self-check tasks” of short texts with questions for reading comprehension.  Only Wh type questions.

In addition, I really want to emphasize the connection between the correct answer and the “Wh” question word used.  So each of the following exercises has two versions. One is a standard “answer the question” version. The other version includes the answers, but the question words are missing.

I hope you find these exercises useful!

 

Thursday, March 12, 2020

The last day of school before shifting into “COVID-19 Time.

I had received this “Keep Calm and Carry On” sign as a gift a few months ago and hadn’t known what to do with it. I updated it and leaned it against the whiteboard, over the “How often” card.

Wasted effort.

Hardly any of my high school students came to school that day. Most of those who did come,  left early.

By noon,  the only students who could be seen in the empty hallways were those in the photos on the dozens of posters for the 12th graders’  final theatre productions.

Performances scheduled for dates that disappeared off the school calendar all at once.

Friday, March 13, 2020

 

No school today. The immediate future is so unclear that I manage to ignore it for most of the day. It’s SPRING – flowers everywhere!  A short walk around the neighborhood does me a world of good. I’ve dreamed about not working Fridays for years!

Sunday, March 15, 2020, and THE ENTIRE WEEK

PANIC!

So we’re supposed to begin teaching via the Internet immediately, right?  I’m all for it, but if I may ask:

How? Which platforms? When? How much? How often? Graded or ungraded? What about our final exams?

And what am I supposed to do about the fact that ALL of the students’ books, notebooks, practice material, readers (and much more!) is in the classroom?!

No “do the exercises on page 58  and send me your answers” for this teacher.

** I am so grateful to all the support I got from the school, my colleagues, publishers who are sharing material online and all the teachers around the world posting helpful information and advice!

Time and scheduling  take on new meanings

 

The upside of spending hours on the challenges of suddenly shifting to distance learning completely

Rising to the new challenges that the sudden shift to distance learning requires is so time-consuming that it has left me with a lot less free time to follow the news and worry.

But best of all is a new kind of connection with the students  – they realize that we are partners who need to navigate our way together toward the goal of keeping up their schooling.

They admit to missing school!

And I miss them too!

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*** Memories of the empty schoolyard in the past.