Having generic forms has been a major timesaver when working with authentic resources. I used to rack my brain to come up with questions for each article or infographic I found… not anymore! I save my specific questions for our discussions AFTER reading.
These are three easy forms I use with news articles, reviews or any authentic reading resource.
#1.) Focus on main ideas.
Let the students decide which words are important and necessary to understand the article. Next, having them focus on words they don’t already know stretches their vocab. They might need to look something up or just identify a new cognate. Finally, get them asking questions! It is an intermediate skill, but we have to get novices practicing it early if we want them to grow!
10 Important Words / 3 New Words / 1 Question I Have
#2.) Compare cultures!
A good authentic resources is going to showcase products, practices, or perspectives. How do they compare with the students’ culture?
Other Culture / In Common / My Culture
See lesson example:Â San ValentÃn and Comparing Cultures
#3.) Dig out details… then summarize.
If students can figure out this info, they can give a simple summary of the reading. Works great with partners, too!
What? / Where? / When? / Who? / What Happened? / Why?
Just like I said… Simple, right?
BYO Authres and you’re ready for tomorrow!
– Only has compare form.
Excellent resources ladies, will you put them on TPT so I can purchase the docs please? Love your work Gals!
We will put a download in the post for Spanish this weekend!
Bianca – we added the link at the bottom of the post! Hope that helps!
Chicas, thank you SO very much for these wonderful resources! Your ideas really encourage us to get our job done well and benefit our kids tremendously! Keep it up!!
Thanks, Joanny!
Gracias again for an awesome classroom resource!! I’m spending so much time this year getting material ready for Spanish 1-4. What a help this will be for all levels. Thanks to y’all for sharing your ideas AND your materials with us!
Hi Kara, thanks for your presentation at SWCOLT last weekend. 🙂
I’d love to use these in my French classroom. I see you started making one in French above.
Here are the translations of the questions: Quoi? Où? Quand? Qui? Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? Pourquoi?
For the words, it’s 10 mots importants, 3 nouveaux mots, & 1 question que j’ai.
The cultural comparison one is almost perfect, except it’s “en commun.”
If you don’t feel inclined to put the French words into your template, perhaps you’d give us Frenchies a hint of what sort of software or site is good for making similar handouts? Merci!
JAK,
We’ll get the French versions up this week! Thanks for the correction! Ooops! 🙂
I’m having trouble finding the French of these examples.
Sorry Stephanie! Recently we changed the site so everything is a free download on here and I missed this post. Now there’s a download button at the end of the post.
I’m novice low at best with French, but we want to start sharing documents in other languages so THANKS JAK for sharing the translations! It took playing around with 4 different programs to get these, so I loaded the French now.
Once again, thank you so much for another helpful resource! I can’t make anything this great looking without it taking me DAYS.
Several aspects of my classroom have been taken from posts here. “Thank you” just doesn’t seem adequate.
Kathy,
Thanks for letting us know!! Sharing with you all and helping language teachers are the reasons this site exists!
Do you have them answer the who/what/where/when/why/what happened questions in the TL or English?
TL! The graphic organizer I give them is in the TL also.
Hello
Do you still have these in French? I wanted to buy them for a friend.
Thanks
Hi Evelyn! I put them back up: http://www.creativelanguageclass.com/product/french-interpretive-forms/
I have just discovered your sites. Great resources and ideas! I I will be using some of the new strategies with my French students. Thank you!
Welcome and glad to help out! These ideas can work for any language. I have adapted many of them from other content teachers’ activities.
I know this is an older post, but as an ASL teacher I need English. If you can put a Word version of any other language, I can adapt it to English. Thank you!! (can’t work with the pdf. thanks!)
I have a question. In some sites, they have students answering the interpretive questions in English, to ensure that the students understand, because that is after all the objective. When you put these together, did you have in mind that the students respond in English or Spanish, depending on the level?
Loly – I have used these reading checks both ways. I can see value in letting them reflect in English, and I can definitely argue for keeping them in the target language so they aren’t relying on translation too often. My default is use the target language UNLESS there is a strong case otherwise.