Event Report, Tottori Chapter October 2017

Many thanks to the BRAIN SIG for jointly sponsoring this event.
Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Amanda demonstrated a variety of activities that can be used to encourage even reluctant readers to take an active part in reading lessons. She began by introducing some “guiding principles / essential ingredients” that she recommends all language educators to consider when teaching reading in order to effectively catch and hold the students’ attention. Examples include: having emotional involvement in the class, giving students choices, personalizing reading materials, having variety and novelty in our classes, challenging students, using multiple senses in lessons, building creativity, encouraging collaboration among students, and praising effort not ability. She stressed the importance of breaking lessons into 10-minute (or less) blocks, having students stand up and move regularly during every lesson, and having students “repeat to remember/remember to repeat.” The audience had the opportunity to experience several small-group reading aloud activities such as reading in chunks, read and look up, finding the changes, storyboards, writing new endings and creating picture stories. Amanda then let the participants work on personalized reading activities that suited their own professional development needs using texts they brought from their own schools. The activities Amanda introduced could be used with a variety of text types (class textbooks, graded readers, magazine and newspaper articles, short stories, song lyrics, the students’ own writing), and required the students to discuss, write, draw, act, and use their imaginations at full stretch. Nineteen people attended this very engaging and motivating Tottori JALT presentation.