I’ve enjoyed my trip down memory lane this October with a month full of reading and graded readers.
My latest collumn in the IH Journal is 5 ways to use Graded Readers in the Primary Classroom and I’m travelling around the Czech Republic with the Oxford Primary Days professional development project talking about using Graded Readers.
This post serves as a reference point for attendees in my sessions. Below are hyperlinks to sites and documents I mention: 
Stephen Krashen: The power of Reading
Big Read Junior – Useful videos to watch
Oxford Primary Days Teacher Development Session Handout
Using Mad Libs with Graded Readers
Steps for Teachers: Preparation
Step 1.
You could choose anything from the reader, or write your own summary. For the below I have used the blurb from the back of OUPs Read and Imagine 4 ‘Swimming with Dolphins’.
Step 2.
Type out the text and choose some words that might be fun to replace.
Dan the Scientist works with dolphins. Ludo the dolphin is under the water and can’t breath, so Rosie dives in to help him. But what happens? The sea can be dangerous – there might be sharks!
Step 3.
Work out what part of speech these words are and create a list of instructions for your students.
1 Your name
2 An exciting job/ occupation
3 Your favourite animal
4 The name of someone in this room
5 A noun/ thing
6 A verb
7 The name of your favourite person e.g. your grandmother/ bestie/ celebrity etc
8 A verb
9 A place
10 An adjective
11 Something scary
Step 4
Copy and paste the text to a document which will become a worksheet for the learners. Remove the words from the text. Number the spaces. You might like to use your creativity and make it look like the back of the book (it could also be made to look like a newspaper/ magazine article about the book, email to a friend about the book, page of the book etc)
(1___________) the (2__________) works with (3_________s). (4__________) the (3__________) is under the (5__________) and can’t (6_________), so (7_________) (8__________s) in to help him. But what happens? (9____________) can be (10____________) – there might be (11___________)!
Step 5
Create an example so that you can show your students that it’s ok for it to not make sense and be funny.
1 Kylie the 2 firefighter works with 3 monkey s. 4 Jitka the 3 monkey is under the 5 table and can’t 6 sing, so 7 Grace 8 dance s in to help him. But what happens? The 9 supermarket can be 10 fabulous – there might be 11 Spiders!
Steps for teachers: Executing the activity in class
The more this activity is broken down into steps, the better.
Step 1
As the students to write the required numbers on a piece of scrap paper (or you could give them pre-written questions. Just don’t let them see the text yet or even tell them there will be a text to follow. Keep it a surprise.)
Step 2
Learners fill in their words
Step 3
Give the learners the text. Ask them to fill in their words.
Step 4
Hopefully the texts are funny, so allow the learners to share them, if not with the whole class, at least with a partner.
Step 5
Elicit where is it is from e.g. a magazine article, blurb, email, newspaper etc.
Step 6
Point out that it is ok if things don’t make sense and are funny. Ask the learners, with their partner or a group to try and guess what the ‘real’ words should be
Step 7
If using the blurb, give the cover of the book to help after they have spent some time already trying to guess the words.
Step 8
Other reading activities……
Until next time, thanks for reading!
klokanomil 