Sample Set II-33: Techniques for Multilevel Reading — A Lesson Plan

Teachers often struggle when instructing students who have different levels of literacy. The following lesson plan demonstrates how a teacher can take advantage of learners' differing abilities through a reading assignment that requires students to find the answers to specific questions about a health clinic in their community. The activity combines practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing as students read an actual brochure and tell each other what they have learned. Of course, when doing this activity, teachers should use brochures from their community and create questions from those brochures, rather than using the sample provided here from Arlington, Virginia.

Multilevel Reading Lesson Plan

Class Multilevel
Date_______________

Time: A two-hour class period is assumed as this is typical for adult ESL classes. This lesson would not last the entire two hours.

Lesson Objective: Read a brochure about a community service.

Language Skills : Reading, speaking, listening, writing

Life Skills : Access community services

Materials:

Stages of the Lesson

Warm Up/Review (10 minutes)

Review health problem (e.g., fever, flu, broken leg) as well as when and where to go for help

Introduction

"Today we are going to read about a place to go for medical help-the Arlington Free Clinic."

Presentation (Pre-reading activity) (15minutes)

  1. Using the KWL transparency, brainstorm what students already know about the clinic and what they want to know about it (schema activation).
  2. Show students the brochure.
  3. Prepare a jigsaw reading activity:
    • Divide the students into heterogeneous groups of four (i.e., groups of mixed reading abilities) and let the students name their group.
    • Assign each student a letter (A, B, C, or D): A for highest level readers and D for lowest level readers.
    • Regroup the students so that all the As are together, all the Bs, etc.
    • Hand out the reading sections from the brochure (A is the most difficult, so this would be given to the students with the best English literacy and proficiency skills. D is the easiest, so this would be given to students with the least proficiency and literacy in English.) The accompanying questions would also be handed out at this time.