Hi Everyone,

My school is starting a reading program in April and I need to come up with some ideas.  All I know so far is that they're ordering a bunch of english books (no sure which ones yet.) 

Can you offer some suggestions/ideas on activities and lessons to do in the program?

We will cater to grades 3~6. 

So far, I'm thinking phonics, mind mapping and comprehension activities but can anyone suggest anything else and/or resources for planning the program?

Thanks in advance!

Great.  Thanks a million!

check out the extensive reading foundation links page
http://www.erfoundation.org/erf/node/9

consider joining KOTESOL (it has an Extensive Reading group) or KEERA (new organization to promote extensive reading in Korea)

friend Aaron Jolly on facebook and/or follow some of his work
http://thejollyprofessor.blogspot.com/

I think that I can sympathize with your situation.  At my former school I struggled a lot with students who by the textbook's standards were supposed to be familiar with English phonics and some basic reading skills, but were somehow "lower level."  Over time, I came to realize that the textbooks (especially the ones used in public elementary schools the last two years) seemed to have been constructed upon the assumption that all students attend hogwans, at which they are expected to actually learn English.  English classes at public schools were just supposed to supplement more serious language instruction with speaking games.

Teaching reading in EFL is not something you do with a class of 30 students.  At my former school, I used afterschool classes, camps, and even offered extra time before school and after lunch to help smaller groups of students with basic phonics and sound/letter recognition.  Development in this area is by no means miraculous nor is it instantaneous, but I did feel at least that these students appeared more confident during regular classes (likely mostly due to the extra familiarity they were able to gain with me in the extra classes).

Here is a book that addresses the issue of teaching reading to English language learners.  It is both theory and practice and has really helped me to understand the process of reading in another language both for our students and for myself as a language learner.

As far as specific technical suggestions, I would suggest starting with the proficiency your students may have in speaking and listening (compared to writing and reading) as a basis for introducing some reading practice.  For instance, you could try to incorporate dictating what certain students say so they can see what the words look like in English.  This could even work from basic Konglish.  This may be a good way of gathering a little bit of interest.  In a smaller group (or better - one on one tutoring) this can be taken as far as helping a student write their own story by dictating what they say and then using the storybook as a basis for their reading practice. 

There is a site called Storybird where students can use excellent illustrations from professional illustrators to write their own stories.  The site has received great responses from a variety of my students (3rd-6th grade, low and higher levels of proficiency).  During winter camp last year, I turned my basic account on the site into a 'teacher' account so that I could register safe accounts for all of the students.  Then, my students spent a couple of days learning touch typing using latin letters.  As a final project, they worked together to write stories.  When they were finished, they could share them in a private group on the Storybird site and leave comments.

I have some more planning to do so I will leave my suggestion there.  I am also interested in learning from others experiences.

I try and reinforce reading and phonics constantly, otherwise its a lost cause.

Example:
"Ok, whats the date today?"
"June 24"
"June 24~~~?"
"f"
"Ah, how do we spell that?"
"T.H."
"That's right, and is that a long ooooooo or a short u in June?"
"Sh...no teacher, long."
"Good. ... Why?"
"Magic e. U, blahblah, magic e."

You pretty much have to plan out what phonemes and graphemes you're going to teach and in what order and also what garbage phonics parts of the crummy textbooks to tell the kids to cross out (No, only Ms Bucket says "Oh my, it's cohwld, and if not, why use an exeption/sight word to teach phonics in the first place?") Remember, phonics is a pre-reading activity. Without that firm basis, reading is limited to rote memorisation and becomes a house of cards.

The textbooks, when they do do it right, only teach long vs short vowels, "th" (both if you're lucky), "ch", "sh" and a handful of dipthongs if you're lucky. Not one I've seen teaches the variants of "g" or "c" nor the various uses of "y" and yet these are elementary reading rules.

I'd sit down and literally list what you wish to teach and then come up with an order and make it a 5 minute daily segment. There's plenty of frameworks out there, but you need to time it to fit your textbook vocab so they get to revise what they've learnt soon. Also, seriously check that they know their vowels. That sounds stupid, but I found very few of mine did. Instead they were taught that a = ㅏ, e = ㅔ, i = ㅣ, o = ㅗ, and u = ㅜ. No. No. No! I even had some opposition from one staffmember in attempting to correct that mistake.

My personal recommended order?
1) Short vowels
2) Hard consonants
3) Long (_e) vowels (e_e can be hard to teach because all the words you could use as examples are intangible -- good luck sticking "extreme" on a flashcard -- I just ignore it, teach the othe 4 and they seem to extrapolate for themselves)
4) Basic consonant blends
5) Y as a vowel
6) G and C (so distinguishing between the sound it makes preceeding a, o, u and as a final consonat vs preceeding e, i and y as a vowel)
7) Basic diphthongs
etc etc

Another idea is make the teaching of phonics somewhat formal. After teaching a phoneme/grapheme pair, print out a flashcard with a couple of good reference words on it and the grapheme itself and have a student go stick it on a designated piece of wall. Colour code the words to arrange the graphemes in logical sets. This then gives them a reference in the class, and if a student is struggling with a word they should be able to read, you have some hints to point at and help them sound it out.

I've honestly been playing with the idea of taking this to the point of teaching something, then testing them the next week and awarding them a little reminder badge (sticker) to place on a phonics stickerboard. The inner completionist in the students will make them want to desperately know those missing rules (I've done this with responses to How Are You at 4th grade and now the poster is at the last empty square, they're all trying to read up and guess the last word.)

Finally, if I'm getting students to sound something out on the board during a reading class, I'll sometimes use colours to split up a word. Long vowels (x_e) go in red, and then alternating between blue and black to distinguish lone and paired letters so the students are sounding out sounds not individual letters.