Sharing a reading activity

This is a lesson activity that could be used with Upper Intermediate students dealing with biographies. The tools used are http://wordsift.com and the site http://www.biography.com/

1. Before reading: show the first image (word cloud) to class on IWB and ask sts to discuss in pairs what they think the text will be about.

2. Ask the whole class ideas about the text.3. Then ask them the most important words in the text are. Ask them if there are any words in the word clouds that they don't know and click on the words. Below they will be able to see images and a word web in the visual thesaurus. (example with the word ILL in the second image). Teacher avoids giving definitions but can use the tools below to help students grasp the meaning.

4. Teacher tells students the text is about a famous person who has already died.

5. Teacher asks students what they know about Mother Teresa. Use the word cloud to predict information about her.

6. Reading: Students read a biography about Mother Teresa. Then without looking at the text , only looking at the word cloud , pairs try to see how much they can remember about the text.

7. Post reading: For Homework , students have to go to http://www.biography.com/ , choose a famous person they admire, read their biography.

8. The following class, students in groups of 3 tell each other about the person they read about.