Reading in class
Usually teachers find it difficult to make students delve into the world of books and, as a consequence, just a small group of students really enjoy reading, while the vast majority do it as an obligation. That is why, and taking advantage of the fact that it’s the international’s book day, we want to promote literature in a more dynamic and fun way to make students enjoy reading.
Reading a book that doesn’t catch your eye or you don’t understand the meaning can turn into a whole challenge for some students. That’s why today we want to propose a group activity to try in class so as students find more interesting and entertaining the activity of reading a book they become fond of this literary world
What does this activity consist of?
The idea of this activity is that students get to understand that reading is not an obligation task that has to be done with no motivation nor objective, but instead a more autodidactic way to learn. This is the reason why we thought of doing an activity as dynamic as possible so students start getting the habit of reading, and most important, that they end up loving it.
The task is structured in groups, depending on the volume of students that the group has the number of members may vary, but the ideal would be between 3 to 5 students per group. The main concept is that students chose a book between the options that are going to be exposed in class by the teacher, being able to choose between books already read in class or books that can be considered as an easy or fast reading. The students from each group will have to read the book that they have previously chosen and once they finish, choose one of the scenes that they have enjoyed the most or that they believe represents the book better and represent it in class in front of their classmates.
Another possible option to add to this activity is the incorporation of some kind of challenge to the rest of the students, having to guess the book that the group is representing, and even rewarding those who get the answers right with extra points or positive ratings on their grades. Another possible option would be transforming the activity into a contest, in which each group that guesses their classmates’ interpretation will move up to the next phase, ending the activity in a competition between the two last final groups.
How can we incorporate Additio to this activity?
There are several ways to use the platform for this activity. The first one is to create a team evaluation, adding the same grade to all the students of the group activity instead of having to add the grades individually. To do this we will only have to access the group class that is going to fulfill the reading activity and select those students that are part of the first team by doing a fast double click on each student. Once we have selected all the members, we will click on the left button of our mouse and choose the option “create group”. At the same time, you will also be able to select the type of grade you want to use, whether it is a number, a positive or negative standard or even using icons.
Once all the groups are created, you can also do coevaluations by selecting directly the group that has to be coevaluated. To do this, you’ll have to create a coevaluation and select the groups you want to enroll in.
Another option to use this platform for this activity is using the student random selector so it choses for yourself the student group that has to expose the activity. The procedure is simple, in the same group class, just click on the magic wand icon that you’ll find on the top right corner of the screen and a student will be automatically and randomly selected. Other options can also be the use of icons to specify some specific action from the student or the incorporation of comments to their grades, the creation of fast columns to follow up on the activity each class, etc.
