Post reading activity
13 Examples of Post-Reading Activities – EnglishPost.org
Post-reading activities help students understand texts further, by critically analyzing what they have read.
Post-reading activities are carried out after you have implemented successfully Pre-Reading Activities and While-Reading Activities
Pre-reading. while-reading and post-reading activities make up the three important stages for reaching a reading lesson
Let’s see the 13 best examples of post-reading activities that you can start doing in your classes.
Table of Contents
- 13 Examples of Post-Reading Activities
- 1. Creative Writing
- 2. Areas of Interest
- 3. Creative Discussions
- 4. Quiz Your Classmates
- 5. Finding Related News
- 6. Prepare a Survey
- 7. Parts of the Speech
- 8. Questions from Pictures
- 9. Character Analysis
- 10. A Graphic organizer
- #11 Questioning the Author of the Book or story
- #12 The End of the Story
- #13 Designing a Poster to Advertise the Book
- Final Thoughts
- English Teaching Related Posts
Post or After Reading activities play a crucial role in reading lessons because they:
- Help students use the newly learned words.
- Promotes the use of the language in creative ways.
Remember that post-reading activities are freer activities that tend to focus mainly on two skills:
- Speaking
- Listening
These are 13 examples of post-reading activities that you should check out.
1. Creative Writing
Ask students to choose 10-15 words from the text they just read.
You can provide categories for the words e.g. the most interesting words / the most important words.
Students then write a text using the words. This text could be a story, poem or news report.
2. Areas of Interest
Ask students to say which part of the text is the most important/interesting and which part is not interesting or important.
If you don’t have enough time so that all students voice their opinions, you can ask them to share their views about the reading with two or three classmates.
When the sharing time is over, you can ask two students to share the most interesting and uninteresting part from the reading
3.
Creative Discussions Prepare four or five simple questions and ask students to talk about those questions for 3 minutes.
After that ask one member of each pair to go and talk to another person of the group about those four or five questions
Repeat the process three or four times and ask three or four students to share some answer that stood out.
4. Quiz Your Classmates
This activity can help us determine how much students learn during the reading.
Ask your students to prepare 5 questions about what they read, once they have them ready, you can tell the students to make groups of 4 and then they can ask those questions to each other.
Let students know that you will be moving from group to group listening to their quiz questions
5. Finding Related News
After students have finished reading, they can browse on the internet for a new related to something they found interesting from the reading.
For example: If they read something about moral and values, they can find examples of altruism on the web and they can share those stories with their classmates.
They can report the information they found orally or write some comments about it.
6. Prepare a Survey
Students can prepare a survey about the information they just read.
Using again the example of the moral and values reading, students can prepare questions such as:
- What would you do if you found a wallet near to your house?
- What would you do if you found a five dollars bill in the classroom?
They can prepare the survey in class and ask the survey to their classmates or they can go home and bring the results and report them during next class.
I recommend creating surveys using Google Forms or Microsoft forms so they can use their mobile devices as part of their learning.
7. Parts of the Speech
Ask students to spot the different parts of the speech from the reading, then they quiz their classmates asking questions such as:
- why type of word is moral? How would you use that word in a sentence?
If you need to know more about the parts of the speech in preparation for the class.
The Parts of the Speech website can help you with that.
8. Questions from Pictures
Teachers shows a collage and ask student to look at the collage carefully and how some of the pictures relate to the reading they did.
There are plenty of websites and apps that can help learners create a collage.
Using websites and apps such as the ones to create collages reduce the time the students spend on the task and integrate mobiles devices in the learning process.
9. Character Analysis
If you read a story, there must be one or two characters involved, analyze those characters and prepare a set of question that you would like to make them.
When all classmates have prepared their questions, ask them to give you their answers and then as a group try to answer the questions.
10. A Graphic organizer
(also known as a concept map or mind map) is usually a one-page form with blank areas for learners to complete with ideas and information which are connected in some way.
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How can Graphic Organizers Improve Learning?
- can help convey large chunks of information concisely.
- encourage strategic thinking: describing, comparing and contrasting, classifying, sequencing, identifying cause and effect,etc
- can be used to aid reading comprehension, students can brainstorm around a topic, summarize texts and do other learning activities, such as organizing and storing vocabulary, planning research, writing projects, etc
- are easy to use with all levels and ages
- are non-linear and thus allow for multiple connections between ideas
#11 Questioning the Author of the Book or story
Ask learners to prepare a set of questions that they would make to the author of the book or story
#12 The End of the Story
Another post-reading activity is asking learners to change the end of the story. Changing the ending of a story to something unpredictable requires some thinking.
#13 Designing a Poster to Advertise the Book
This activity could easily linked to the use of technology in the classroom.
Simply ask learners to create a poster using a tool like Piktochart or Canva
Final Thoughts
Remember that teacher must start a reading lesson with a warm-up followed by pre-reading activities and while-reading activities, finally he or she must apply some of the techniques featured in this post to end that reading successfully.
- What after-reading strategies do you like to use in your classroom?
- Do you have favorites that work well in your classroom?
Please share with us in the comment section below, we would love to hear your thoughts.
English Teaching Related Posts
I hope that you have found everything you were looking for about post-reading activities. Make sure that you check some of these posts before you go
These are some posts related to teaching listening:
- Stages for Teaching Listening
- Best Pre-Listening Activities
- Best While-Listening Activities
- Best Post-Listening Activities
- What Types of Listening are there?
These are some posts for teaching methodology:
- Presentation, Practice and Production Framework
- Teacher-Centered Instruction
- Student-Centered Instruction
- Tips to Reduce Teacher Talking Time
These are some assessment related posts
- How to Assess Reading Skills
- How to Assess Speaking Skills
- How to Assess Writing Skills
- How to Assess Reading Skills
Make the best of your teaching time!
Categories Teaching ReadingAbout manuel Campos
I am Jose Manuel, an English professor, and creator of EnglishPost.
org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English
After-Reading Activities | SEA - Supporting English Acquisition
Students often finish a reading, close the book, and don't think about it again until they arrive in class. The following activities can be used after a reading to help students analyze concepts for a deeper understanding of ideas and organize information for later retrieval:
Graphic Organizers
Encourage students to use graphic organizers (charts or concept "maps") to help them visualize concepts and key relationships between ideas from their readings. These should be started right after students have completed a reading, whereas revisions and additions can be done after class discussions.
It's a good idea to show students several examples of graphic organizers and explain which ones work well with different text patterns. Many reading skills texts have examples of various graphic organizers with explanations of how they might best be used.
Here is an example of one type of graphic organizer for comparing two concepts:
Quiz Questions
After students read a chapter or section of a chapter in the course textbook, ask them to develop questions for a quiz. (This can also be done with other reading materials.) This activity forces them to analyze the information in the chapter and decide on the most important concepts to remember.
Formulating questions can also help them to organize the concepts into logical chunks of information for easier retrieval. Working in groups on this activity is helpful for further discussion of concepts.
Students can then present their questions to the class and see who can answer them correctly. The students trying to answer the questions may offer suggestions on how to write a question more clearly so that it can be easily understood. Teachers might also offer suggestions for revision of questions. Other SEA Site modules, for example, "WH-Questions" and "Passive Voice" can be useful for teachers in providing guidance in using structures that will be more easily understood by students.
Summary Writing
Ask students to write a summary of the main points of a text or passage. Figuring out what to include in a summary is often a difficult task for students, so passing out a handout with the criteria for a good summary can serve as a reminder to students.
Modeling the process of good summary writing during class is also helpful. For example, when students have finished a portion of text, begin a discussion of the most important points from the text. Write all the points that students suggest on the board. Discuss which ideas should be included in the summary. In addition, show how ideas can be paraphrased and written in the student's own words.
Remember to emphasize that minor details,specific examples, and opinions should not be included in a summary of a text.
Outlining
Writing outlines is also a good way to organize and remember concepts. The emphasis here should be on how students see the relationships between ideas being presented.
Don't worry if students don't use the correct Roman numerals or other markers. What is important is that they are able to distinguish the main ideas from the supporting details and organize the information in a logical format.
Creative Testing
To evaluate how much of a text students understood, and to see how confident students are when answering questions about a text, you can try the following quiz method I saw used by a colleague, Vicki Robinson, in a physics class at NTID. This method also encourages valuable small group discussion of concepts. Here's how it works:
Students read an assigned number of pages for homework. (The number of pages assigned usually depends on the level of difficulty of the text.) They are told that they will be quizzed on the information the next day.
When the students arrive for class the following day, they are each given a quiz and asked to complete it individually. The quiz involves a series of TRUE/FALSE (T/F) questions where the students are required to write three answers for each question.
Here's an example of a quiz question:
Newton's third law of motion is: For every force (action), there is an equal and opposite force (reaction).
If students feel strongly that this statement is true, they would write T, T, T as their three answers to the question. If they are fairly confident that this statement is true, but not totally sure, they could write T, T, F. If they feel strongly that this is an incorrect statement, they could answer F, F, F, and so on. Each question is worth three points, so it is possible to receive partial credit.
After students answer all the questions, their papers are collected by the teacher. Then the students are divided into groups and given the same quiz. Students discuss the questions, give their opinions, and try to support their answers with information they remember from the text. They write their own TRUE and FALSE answers to the questions again based on the discussion with their group.
The teacher collects the papers and has the option of keeping both scores for each student, combining the scores for both quizzes and recording the average, or keeping the higher of the two scores.
Effect of reading on brain activity
Author: Thomas Oppong
Reading makes the brain work.
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
It allows us to surf the vastness of space, time, history, and offers us a deeper look at various ideas, concepts and the very essence of knowledge.
Roberto Bolagno says: "Reading is like thinking, praying, talking to a friend, expressing your thoughts, listening to others' ideas, enjoying music, seeing beautiful scenery and walking along the beach." nine0005
Our brain works when we read - it develops, changes, creates new connections and different images depending on what we read.
Reading increases the density of neural connections
When we read, our brain changes and develops in amazing ways.
As you read these words, your brain is decoding a series of abstract symbols and synthesizing the result into complex ideas.
This is an amazing process.
The brain while reading can be compared to the cohesiveness of playing a symphony orchestra during a live performance - while reading, different parts of the brain are involved in the same way to increase the ability to decode text.
Reading "reflashes" parts of our brain. Mariann Wolfe explains in her book Proust and the Squid: The Fiction and Science of the Human Reading Brain
In the 1950s, the squid's long central axial cylinder showed scientists how neurons fire and communicate information to each other. The image of a squid contains a metaphor for comparing literature and science - approx. trans.) :
People invented reading only a couple of millennia ago. With this invention, we have rewired the organization of our brains, which in turn has expanded our ways of thinking, and this has reshaped the intellectual evolution of us as a species. <...> This skill became available to our ancestors only because the human brain has an amazing ability to create new connections among existing structures.This process was made possible by the ability of the brain to change in the course of acquiring new experience. nine0036
Reading engages several brain functions, including visual and auditory processes, phonemic recognition, fluency, comprehension, and more.
According to ongoing research at Haskins Laboratories on spoken and written word cognition, reading provides more time for reflection, processing, visualization, and internal interpretation than viewing or listening. nine0005
Daily reading can slow down age-related cognitive decline and keep your brain sharp.
Reading stimulates logical thinking
Research shows that reading not only helps develop fluid intelligence but also conscious perception along with with emotional intelligence.
Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve problems, understand and recognize meaningful elements. nine0005
Reading can increase fluid intelligence, and it can improve conscious understanding of the text.
A Stanford study found a neurobiological difference between reading for pleasure and focused reading, such as when taking a test.
Blood enters different neural regions depending on how we read.
A study published in 2011 in the Annual Review of Psychology found an overlap in the areas of the brain responsible for text comprehension and the cellular structures used for interaction. nine0005
Reading makes us emotionally educated
Reading plays an important social role.
When we read fiction, we mentally imagine the event, situation, characters and other details described by the author.
This is a total immersion process.
In her book Anne LaMotte Bird by Bird. Notes on writing and life in general writes:
<...> for some of us, books are more precious than almost everything in the world. What a miracle that in these small, hard, almost flat bricks of paper, new worlds are hidden that sing to you, console, soothe or inspire you.Books help us understand who we are and how we should act. They explain what kinship and friendship are, show how to live and how to die. nine0036
Psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuel Castano of The New School (Private Research University in New York City - approx. Per.) proved that reading fiction contributes to the development of noticing and understanding the emotions of other people. This skill is extremely important for managing complex human relationships.
“Writers make you writers. In fiction, the incompleteness of characters forces your brain to try to understand the way others think,” says Kidd. nine0005
Researchers at Emory University found that reading a novel enhances neural connections in the area of the brain responsible for speech perception.
The work of the lead author, neuroscientist Gregory Burns, suggests that reading is also connected to a process known as embodied cognition Wednesday - approx. per.) . nine0005
“Neural changes that we found to be related to physical sensations and the motor system suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the protagonist's body.
<...> We already knew that good stories can make people feel like they're in a strange place, figuratively speaking. Now we see that changes can also occur at the biological level,” says Gregory Burns.
Reading improves concentration
In just one 30-minute time frame, the average person does a lot of work: working on a task, checking email, talking to colleagues, checking social media, and constantly responding to notifications. nine0005
Reading not only improves brain activity, but also allows you to extend the time of focus and concentration.
If you are having trouble concentrating, reading can help you increase your concentration time.
When you read a book, all your attention is focused on the plot or the desire to deepen knowledge in a certain area - the rest of the world disappears, and you can immerse yourself in the story, noticing every detail.
Well-structured books allow us to think consistently. Thus, the more we read, the more our brain develops the skill of connecting cause with effect.
nine0005
Try to read for 15-20 minutes in the morning before work (for example, while driving to work if using public transport).
You will be surprised how much more attentive you will become at work.
Dissolving in a book is an indescribable relaxation!
Develop the Habit of Reading
In a world where information is a new kind of currency, reading is the best source of continued learning, knowledge and acquisition of even more currency. nine0005
Reading requires patience, diligence and determination.
Reading is like any other skill. It has to be practiced regularly and constantly.
Whether you prefer the convenience of a smartphone with an alluring backlight or the feel of a real book in your hand, make time to read in any way.
The next time you're shopping for a book or downloading it on the Kindle, stop and think about what you're reading—reading always has an effect. nine0005
Dig Deeper
My new Thinking in Models course is open for enrollment.
It's designed to help you think clearly, solve complex problems, and make tough decisions with confidence. Join a community of people who have chosen as their mission to learn to think clearly, work better, solve problems of different levels of complexity and make difficult decisions with confidence!
You can also subscribe to Postanly Weekly (my free daily digest of the best posts about behavioral changes that affect health, well-being and productivity). Subscribe and get a free copy of my new book One Hundred Percent Better: Small Cost, Maximum Value. Join over 45,000 people who are determined to build a better life. nine0005
A joint project of the Lingvopand Club and LL editors
How reading affects our brain and a person. Conversation with high school students
What is the benefit of reading? Reading is one of the best brain exercises. Reading develops attention, memory, enriches vocabulary, develops speech, literacy. The brain of a person who began to read in childhood is better able to activate all its resources than the brain of a person who has learned to read and write as an adult.
Reading can be supported by scientists who have found that reading helps the human body stay young longer. Ursula Lenz of the Federal Association of Organizations Working with the Elderly (BAGSO) states, “For older people, reading books is beneficial for several reasons. First, the ability to translate words into mental forms and images has a positive effect on cognitive functions. Secondly, reading helps to concentrate. Therefore, reading books can be considered a universal way to keep a lively mind even in old age. nine0005
The more and faster a person reads, the better he is able to express his thoughts in writing.
Deep reading (slow, thoughtful reading of texts with complex moral issues) synchronizes the work of the brain regions responsible for vision, hearing and speech.
There are two ways to use deep reading.
1. Reading the poem i.
In a study published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, scientists reported finding activity in areas of the brain responsible for reading that manifested itself differently when reading different texts.
nine0005
Comparing poetry and prose, scientists were able to prove that when reading poetic texts, the posterior cingulate cortex and the medial temporal lobe, the areas of the brain responsible for introspection, are activated.
It turned out that when reading poetry, neurons react literally to every word. The brain reacts especially sharply to unusual poetic turns. For example, when Shakespeare's epithet "mad" for the wind was replaced with the simpler word "furious", the brain took this adjective for granted. But it was the unusual epithet "crazy" that made the nervous system mobilize, as if the brain was trying to comprehend what the word was doing here. nine0005
Reading poetry, according to scientists, also activated the right hemisphere of the brain, or rather, its area responsible for autobiographical memories. The reader seemed to be addressing his personal experience in the light of the impressions he had just received.
When the subjects read their favorite poems, the memory parts of the brain were more active than the reading areas.It's good for creative writing.
2. Reading classical fiction. nine0151
Research by Professor Natalie Phillips has shown that reading is just as beneficial to the body as exercise, as reading literature exercises the entire brain. During the experiment, the researchers placed study participants in an MRI camera and asked them to read a chapter from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, the text of which was projected onto a monitor inside the camera.
Participants were asked to do this in two ways: as if they were reading for pleasure, and also by critically analyzing the text, as is done before taking an exam. The MRI machine allowed scientists to observe the blood circulation in the human brain while reading. nine0005
It turned out that during the transition from reading for pleasure to critical perception of information, a sharp change in the types of nervous activity and the nature of blood circulation occurs in the human brain. Depending on the way of reading a book, the human body uses different mechanisms to train the cognitive abilities of the brain.
When reading, blood enters those areas of the brain that are outside the areas responsible for control, and reaches areas associated with the abilities of concentration and cognition. nine0005
Thus, scientists have proved that when reading, the effect of "immersion" in the book is activated, when a person mentally imagines himself in the place of the hero.
This effect does not occur when watching TV or playing a game.
In addition to stimulating brain activity, the process of reading has an important social function.
Experts also advise to allocate at least two hours a day to reading good literature. The reason lies in the fact that reading does not limit human imagination. That is why, as a rule, a film based on a book does not meet the expectations of viewers who have imagined a completely different production in their imagination. nine0005
In addition, the more a person reads, the less he looks like others. Together with the heroes of the works, his character and personality, the true criteria for worthy behavior and evaluation of the activities of others, are formed.
It is also worth noting that, first of all, scientists recommend reading science fiction, since it is this literature that stimulates brain activity, develops imagination and thinking.
All research related to the reading of books used to study mainly the process of reading itself. Gregory Burns and his colleagues, neurophysiologists from Emory University (USA), decided to be guided by the results of tomography in their research. The 20-day experiment involved 20 student volunteers who had to read Robert Harris' Pompeii. nine0005
For the first five days of the experiment, the participants simply underwent a CT scan. So the scientists got the initial picture of the state of the brain of the participants. Over the next nine days, participants read one chapter of the novel each evening and were scanned again in the morning. The remaining days the students did not read, but they still passed the scan. In addition, subjects answered questions on tests that tested whether they had actually read the novel.
Scientists have found an increase in the number of connections between neurons in the left temporal lobe of the brain of the experiment participants on the days when they read the novel. In this area of the brain are the main speech centers. Scientists have noticed the same effect in the central sulcus of the brain. This part is connected with the motor and motor centers: the neurons here are responsible for creating internal images, that is, they allow a person to imagine and even feel the movements of a literary hero and his position. nine0005
Researchers note that this effect of reading is not short-lived. Changes in the brain persisted in the subjects for up to five days after reading the last chapter of the novel. Given that the book was chosen completely randomly, scientists add that the positive effect of reading your favorite book will most likely be longer.
The book is an unsurpassed way to experience strong emotions, an assistant to cope with many problems.
For more than one thousand years, this effective and fairly common method allows, through reading fiction and experiencing strong emotions and experiences, to cope with stress, overcome adversity, mental crises, develop strong-willed qualities.
nine0005
So, reading is a complex process that involves both hemispheres of the brain and all its parts. From the frontal lobes of the brain, among other things, also depend on the work of our heart and our ability to breathe. That is why reading is considered necessary for the good functioning of the heart and respiratory system. According to the results of a study by American scientists, to the question: “Why do you read?” - two-thirds of the respondents answered: "To forget about daily worries." It is no coincidence that in the British health system, reading is considered as one of the components in the treatment of mental patients. Reading protects against a heart attack, according to scientists, 6 minutes of reading a day is enough to avoid this disease. Reading helps you recover faster after a stroke. Readers who have had a stroke recover at an astonishing rate compared to those who have never held a book in their hands, experts say. Reading strengthens our memory and protects against dementia.
Researchers have found that people who love reading have a 40% reduced risk of acquiring memory-related illnesses. This is explained by the fact that reading does not allow brain cells to die. Reading keeps our brain alert throughout the day. And this is because reading requires much more energetic activity from our brain than, for example, talking or viewing any images. nine0005
Scientists from the University of Sussex have shown that 6 minutes of reading reduces stress levels by more than 2 times. And this process is faster than listening to music or walking.
Thus, a constant reading exercise not only improves the reading process itself, broadens one's horizons, but also increases the efficiency of the brain in almost all areas of human activity ...
- Reading authors who write well, you get used to speaking well. F. Voltaire
- People who read books will always control those who watch TV. F. Janlis
- Reading is for the mind what exercise is for the body.
