Jigsaw reading group lesson

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Jigsaw reading lesson for groups - for intermediate levels and above:

1. Select (or get learners to select) several Easier English articles which will suit and interest learners in your group. These could be grouped around a theme eg. "Climate emergency", "Crime", "Human rights".

2. Lead-in: write up or display the titles of all the articles - learners discuss titles in pairs or groups to see if they can predict the stories.

3. Get learners into pairs or small groups, depending on how many learners and articles you have eg. 15 learners and 5 articles = 1 article for each group of 3 learners. Groups could select their article from the title. Or you could differentiate by having articles of different lengths and difficulty for different ability learners. Hand out articles.

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4. Set a brief skimming task eg. in 1 minute, learners skim through text and decide what the problem or issue is. Learners then discuss in their pairs / small groups.

6. Set a detailed reading task eg. learners have 10 minutes to read and decide on the 5 main points / who?what?where?when?why?how?. Groups then have time to compare their understanding and check any vocabulary they have problems with, and to prepare how they are going to present their article to the others.

7. Re-group learners: eg. AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE move to ABCDE ABCDE ABCDE. They now have 15 minutes to take it in turns to tell the group about their text and ask each other questions. At the end, they can decide on a ranking order for the texts eg. in order of most to least serious problem / crime. The teacher can monitor for speaking errors during the task, then write up the errors and get learners to correct them.

8. Follow-up: learners could make posters in their new groups to raise awareness of the issues in the articles; or role-play interviews with the authors of the articles; or write letters to the leaders of the countries the articles are about.

8. Homework - learners read the original articles in the link at the bottom of the texts and compare with the Easier English text