Readers are a great resource in the young learner English classroom. They are colourful, attractive and really appeal to children. Readers can also draw children into the world of books and reading as well as making them feel more positive and confident about their English.

What exactly is a reader? Readers come in all shapes and sizes. There are almost as many different kinds of readers as there are children and te achers!! The readers you choose should be the ones that suit you and your class best. So what are some of the options?

Big Books: do you want big books to use with your small children?

Course Books: do you want readers as part of your course book package?

Extras: do you want readers which have audio or video cassettes, teachers\rquote notes and activities?

Genre: do you want fiction or non-fiction?

Illustrations: do you want colour pictures, black and white or none at all?

Language: do you want graded language and content or do you prefer ' Real Books' ? Some teachers prefer to use 'Real Books' with their children, that is books which have been written for mother tongue children rather than books which have been written specifically for children learning English as a second or foreign language. Choosing which 'Real Books' to use with children needs some thought. Because they have not been written with English language learners in mind, but for young mother tongue children, sometimes the language is a little complex and the content a little simple! Graded readers also need to be chosen with care as to language level and content. Giving a child a book which is clearly too easy and \lquote babyish\rquote for them and possibly labelled as such can be just as demotivating as givi ng them too challenging a book to read.

How can I help my young learners to read?}

Reading is generally thought of as a receptive skill, and involves learners making sense of and understanding both pictures and words - yes, reading for children starts with and includes the ability to \lquote read\rquote pictures and goes on to involve a number of different processes and skills which learners need to be helped to develop.

We can help young learners to read more effectively by: doing pre-reading activities. These activate knowledge of the topic, encourage learners to predict and guess what is coming and motivate them to want to read! some examples: brainstorming, predicting from pictures, pre-teaching of vocabulary, \par sequencing pictures, guessing what is going to happen setting reading tasks. Learners need a purpose for reading and a task does just that! some examples: confirming (or not) predictions from the pre-reading activity, finding out \par how many characters there are in the story, finding a specific piece of information doing post-reading activities. These help learners to make sense of what they have read and give them more opportunities to use and to begin to internalise the language. some examples: creating their own version of a story, making their own books, making a } Where does reading aloud fit into this? My feeling is that as long as we know why we are asking our learners to read aloud, that there is a purpose for their doing so, then on occasion it can be a useful activity. But a learner\rquote s ability or lack of ability to read aloud is not an accurate indicator of their level of understanding. Just because a learner can read aloud well does not necessarily mean they can understand what they are reading! But child development the ory does tell us that as children develop speech and reading they do go through a stage when they do \lquote speak their thoughts\rquote and do need to quietly read aloud to themselves to aid their understanding of text. \par \par We mustn\rquote t forget that young learners should al so be encouraged to read for pleasure. Readers should be available in the classroom so that learners can pick up a book and read it for its own sake, without always having to complete tasks and activities. Readers can be used at any time in a lesson or in a sequence of activities. They can be used at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a lesson. Individual reading can be a good 'settler' activity, too. Class reading. This is when all the learners in the class are reading the same book, though not necessarily at the same time and not necessarily as a whole class activity. A 'class set' of readers can be particularly useful when the topic of the reader complements the topic you are studying. One way o f managing class reading is to start with a whole class pre-reading activity. Then, rather than reading aloud round the class, it is a good idea once you have set a task to have a quiet reading time when everyone, including you, reads silently. When you f i rst introduce quiet reading, a maximum of five minutes is probably enough. As learners get used to it, you might want to extend the time. For you to read when learners are reading shows them that you think reading is important too - you are doing it with them! After the quiet reading time, learners can give feedback on the task and talk about what they have read, either in groups or as a whole class. Group reading. There will be times when you want learners to read different books, or when they want to re ad different books themselves. Choice of what they read will help learners to become more motivated to read and also develops learner autonomy. Some learners might want to read non-fiction while others read fiction, for example, and you only need a small s election of readers to enable them to do this. You might be able to use the same pre-reading activity for the whole class if the readers are on similar topics, for example, and the learners are extending their awareness of the classroom topic by reading. I f the readers are more diverse than this, you can easily create a pre-reading activity for each set of readers, such as a picture or question for learners to talk about before they read. The same applies to the reading tasks and the post-reading tasks: so metimes the same tasks can be done by the whole class, at other times groups will need different tasks. One way of learners sharing what they have read is for each group to report back to the rest of the class. Here is a reading activity for you to try out with your learners. You can adapt it to use with learners of different ages and levels and for group and class reading too. to stimulate interest in a reader and reading Readers for all the learners in the class. This activity works best if you have sets of at least two different short readers which link to the topic you are studying. Large photocopies of the picture on the front cover of each of the two readers. Make sure you hide the title! 24 Small photocopies of the cover for stage 8.

Time 30 - 40 minutes

1 Hold up the photocopy of the first cover for all the learners to see. If you need to, walk around the class so that everyone can see it clearly.

2 Ask 'What can you see?' Let the learners tell you. Help them by asking questions like 'Is this story about teddy bears?' (when there is a picture of a monster for example).

3 Confirm their predictions and say 'This book is about (e.g. a horse, a boy, a girl, a monster)'.

4 Ask 'What do you think happens in this story?' Hold you fingers up to your lips to indicate the learners should think for a minute and not speak.

5 Say 'Who wants to tell me what happens?' Accept all suggestions. Don't say if they are right or wrong. Note them on the board.

6 Repeat stages 1 to 5 for the other reader(s).

7 Show all the photocopies again. Hold up the first one. Say 'Who wants to read this story?' Learners put up their hands. Repeat with the other photocopy/ies.

8 Organise the learners into groups of about four, according to their choice of book. Give groups a photocopy of their cover and say 'Talk about your ideas in your group for one minute'.

9 Say 'Now read the story and see if these things happen' . Point to the notes on the board you wrote at stage 5.

10 Give each learner a copy of the reader they chose. Learners read silently.

11. When the groups have finished reading point to the notes on the board and say 'Were you right? Did these things happen? What was the same and what was different?' Talk about this in your groups.

12 After a few minutes, hold up the photocopy of the first cover again, point to the board and your notes from stage 5 and say 'Was this right?' Let the learners tell you what was right and what was different. Repeat using the photocopy of the other cover(s).