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Reading for Success! by Theresa Zanatta

The Reading Component in New Parade by Mario Herrera

Reading for Success! Teaching with the 63 Pull-Out Little Books in New Parade

by Theresa Zanatta

Why have little pull-out, take-home stories in every unit of the New Parade Student Book?

We know that a good EFL program provides students with an opportunity to see the unit language in the context of an illustrated, readable story. We wanted to present models of the key language in story form so that students would want to retell the story to their parents, teachers, and friends and then rewrite and maybe even write something similar in the form of class writing activities, homework, school publishing contests, and other activities.

This method follows a scaffolding approach to writing. Students are given accessible models, they work through the models for comprehension and interpretation, and then they read them and interact with the models. Ultimately, the goal is for students to write stories.

The Themes

The themes of these little hand-held books follow the same themes as each unit. The story content was chosen and developed by focusing on an aspect of the theme that was:

The Language of the Stories

In our discussions with teachers around the world, we heard teachers say that they wanted stories that used the language of the unit and did not contain a heavy vocabulary load of words that had not yet been taught.

They felt that students needed more examples of the target language in context and more oral and written practice with this key language in context. This is why New Parade has 63 graded pull-out Little Books - one for every unit in every level!

We also knew that the language of the stories needed to be both age and stage appropriate. This meant that we did not move outside the key vocabulary of each unit (approximately 10 to 12 target or core words per unit). Of course, this list became cumulative and much larger in number as the levels increased and we were able to recycle language from previous units.

The use of the key language in a way that is both controlled but life-like is one of the things that we are most proud of and one we spent a great deal of time working on.

Creating a Classroom Library

These stories are in no way meant to replace the classroom library, which may contain both authentic and graded reading material - particularly in schools where the number of hours of instruction in English is much greater than in the typical school (where English is taught two or three times per week). But in addition to a classroom library, now you can also have a child's own personal English reading library with the nine Little Books in every level.

Teaching Your Students to Read

With each little pull-out Little Book you will find a 3-step teaching process:

These activities and steps will teach your students the strategies and skills needed to become better readers.

We would like to hear from you, the New Parade teachers! Please send your questions and comments to newparade@pearsoned.com.

The Reading Component in New Parade . . . How it Matches Today's EFL Needs!

by Mario Herrera

While native speakers comprehend and enjoy what they read, many EFL learners settle for comprehension because they 'are learning the language' at the time they are reading it. Reading full stories with controlled texts that still provide a sense of achievement can break this cycle. We have managed to achieve such results by adding Little Books with a full EFL approach to New Parade.

New Parade's reading component allows students to engage in pre-reading, reading and post-reading activities that enhance the language learning process. The Little Book lessons include activities such as previewing stories, learning new words, practicing guided reading, visualizing, summarizing, role-playing, making content connections, writing, studying grammar connections, doing hands-on art projects, etc.

Reading and the Lesson Plan

When we teach English as a foreign language, we help our students develop two categories of skills: receptive (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing.) Because reading is a receptive skill, we use it for presentation purposes, but it is also a full teaching stage approached in reading selections and Little Books.

In New Parade, reading for presentation purposes appears practically at the beginning of all five stages of our lesson plan (warm up, presentation, practice, application and assessment). In other words, it is used to 'present' the activities for each teaching stage. Through reading activities, our students get to see the new language in use on our presentation pages, what they are expected to do in our practice pages, how to solve problems in our application pages, and how to show their mastering of the content in our assessment pages.

As a teaching stage in its own merit, it appears within the application stage in our new storybook component, ready for students to pull out and fold!

Our ELT Problem with Reading

Reading texts are meant to be enjoyed or informative, but because our EFL students are currently learning the language, and concentrating on understanding, they miss out on the enjoyment. This has given reading a bad profile. Our students should be exposed to reading texts that they can understand and that are followed up by EFL activities. This will give them a psychological sense of achievement.

Teachers need special reading opportunities where students can add enjoyment to comprehension. Nevertheless, students can understand more than what they can produce, so they benefit from challenging activities.

What We Need to Achieve

Through our reading activities, we must stimulate our students to use the unit's target language when they express themselves. We can achieve this by creating a classroom ambiance in which students' cultural knowledge and interests can be shared and validated, thereby motivating them to participate more actively in their learning process.

Because we are dealing with EFL learners, we need to make sure we highlight pedagogical procedures that match both the ELT process and the teaching of reading strategies, such as EFL strategy pre-reading activities, story build-up techniques, and of course expansion through follow-up activities. Students can point at pictures and retell stories. They can follow rhythms of a story they are not able to read. They can act the story out, etc. We can start introducing students to these techniques, even before they can read in their native language!

Our objectives are:

We Must 'ELTize' the Reading Texts!

It is very important that teachers make students feel secure when dealing with reading activities. The advantages of reading in our native language don't exist here. What and how we do things defines not only our students' ability to engage in what they set out to do, but also determines their chances of using such activities as authentic opportunities for improving their knowledge. This can be done by using stories with key vocabulary and expressions from our units, including re-enactment possibilities for students to have a better grasp on meaning, and adding hands-on activities as a follow up. In order to cover these conditions, the language (grammar) and the content we are teaching in a given unit is built up and expanded in a story or reading selection. That's what we have done in our new Little Books. If teachers follow the recommendations in the Teacher's Edition for 'before,' 'during,' and 'after' reading activities, they will help students gain more enjoyment and take advantage of other learning opportunities.

Using the correct procedures ensures that students will get the best out of their reading experiences, but nothing can be more beneficial than a committed teaching team to succeed. In Pearson Education we like to think of ourselves as your partners in this teaching team, so feel free to contact us with your suggestions and questions. It's always great to hear from you and try to support you in your efforts! Please send your questions and comments to newparade@pearsoned.com.

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