As CI teachers, we know reading is cardinal to language acquisition. It is a must! Whether you are reading a novel, an article, or a short story,  how can we continue to hook them? What else can we do to make this content relevant? Sometimes, the content won’t be relevant to ALL students as hard as we may try, but the activities CAN BE via the use of actions they do every day on their phone, using the social media “messages” with which they are familiar creating. However, in your class they won’t need a phone for these activities (maybe only for one).

When students feel capable of delivering, they will more than likely stay with you throughout your unit (even if isn’t that relevant to them).

These quick reading comprehension checks can be super helpful and quick to produce (or you can demand  very cute, artistic, and colorful ones in order make the activity take much longer if you need that kind of day, which let’s face it, we are on THOSE April – May days). Perhaps, you have already tried some of these, but the ones I am sharing today are my favorites because of the engagement level involved when students are creating these.

I usually have my students complete some of these activities when they have completed their reading of a story,  a chapter of a novel, or at the end of the entire novel to review. I am sharing some student samples (even with errors). I know my students always get super creative with the following:

• Fake Text It –  With a partner or individually, students can create a fake text conversation between two characters of the story/novel relevant to the content they’ve just read.

• Tweet it – Students create a product that can be tweeted. It can be a real tweet or poll from a character’s perspective. The point is for the student to connect deeper with the characters of the reading.

• Meme reaction – Students create X number of memes per reading in the target language about anything they read.

• #Hashtags – Give students a reading, and have them hashtag each paragraph with either rejoinders for lower levels or their own original hashtags at a higher level.

• Instagram profile for a character – Artistic students can create a fake Instagram profile for their favorite character. What would it say on its description? What types of pictures would they post? Their art must resemble a real Insta profile.
• Playlist – Students looooove music. That is a fact! This is a great activity to allow them to connect to the character, main idea, or story plot.  I got this idea from Tracee Orman, ELA teacher (Confession: I follow ELA and Social Studies teachers on Instagram and I borrow ideas from them as well). Have students come up with a playlist of the songs about the chapter or what a character might listen to given that chapter or reading. If you expose them to a lot of target language music, higher levels will be able to do this without any problems. If you don’t do as much music as you would like, or they are novice learners, they can complete this playlist with English songs (it is a great chance for you to learn about the type of music they are into) and they are still making powerful connections to the reading. You can start with three songs, and have them write a sentence in the target language about each song in relation to their reading. In this example, I had my students select the three most important facts straight from the chapter, and then I had them come up with their playlist.

1. Books Snaps – If you haven’t tried book snaps, please watch this video by Tara M Martin, the original creator of book snaps. Basically, students use Snapchat to connect to what they are reading. By creating a book snap, they can show their understanding of a chapter. These ones take a bit more time to create and this activity does require a phone, but not too much. Kristy Placido has an amazing handout on her Tpt store that I have used and tweaked for my students.

Finally, it would have been great to share handouts with you today, but the reality is that I love these activities because they are very much no prep, and I love no prep go to activities where I can simply let students’ creativity flow. They never cease to amaze me with their creativity!