How to Get Novice Learners Reading in the Target Language (Starting Tomorrow) with Adam Giedd

If you know something about me, you know one of my obsessions is reading. A few years ago, in Episode 84, Dr. Stephen Krashen came to the podcast to talk with us about the power of reading, Episode 84. And I think we just need to keep talking about reading.

This week, my guest is Adam Giedd, a former Spanish teacher who is so obsessed with reading for novice learners that he started writing books for them. A few months ago, I invited Adam to the Spanish Teacher Academy to share reading strategies with our teachers, and the session was so good that I knew we had to bring it to the podcast.

This episode is for every world language teacher, not only Spanish teachers. If your students are just starting out (or if you have novice learners sitting in your Level 3 or Level 4 class), I hope you leave with at least one idea you can try tomorrow.

🎧 Listen to the full episode.

The short answer: how do you get novice learners reading?

Here is what Adam and I talked about, in a nutshell:

1. Write for the students who usually get left behind, not for the students who are flying.
2. Focus on verbs. Focus on high frequent verbs. Everything else is extra.
3. Start silent sustained reading on day 2 by projecting the text you created together yesterday.
4. Give students short, very easy books they can finish in about 10 minutes, so they feel successful.
5. Add a little novelty (like Book Bingo) so students happily read the same text again and again.

Now let’s go deeper.

Why reading matters so much in a novice classroom

We know our students need comprehensible input and interaction to acquire language. The problem, especially with novice learners, is that we depend so much on oral input. And oral input is exhausting.

Adam has had classes of 35, 40, even 50 students. Realistically, are we going to give 40 minutes of oral input every single class? That is so tiring for us, and some students get lost along the way.

Reading gives us another way in. And here is something I love: reading is also one of the best ways to truly differentiate. When I have a student in my Level 3 class who is still a novice, I cannot create a whole second lesson for him. But I can put the right text in his hands.

Adam’s story: 920 students, five schools, 30 minutes a week

Adam once taught about 920 students across five schools. He saw each class for 30 minutes, once a week, and he could not leave any vocabulary on the walls. (Traveling teachers, I see you!)

And guess what? Adam said it became his favorite semester ever. Because when you only have 30 minutes, you have to choose the one most important thing. And by the second month, those students were reading books.

The idea started at home. Adam watched his son learn to read in kindergarten with those little 10–20 page books you can finish in one sitting. And he realized: we cannot ask students to read a novel in Spanish if they have never successfully read a short book that took them 10 minutes.

Strategy 1: Write to your struggling readers

This is the idea from Adam that changed how I write with my students.

Adam explained that we teachers usually do a great job of making our oral input accessible. We speak slowly, we use visuals, we check for understanding. But the moment we turn that conversation into a written text (like a Write and Discuss), we often go way past the students who are struggling.

So his rule is simple: write the text so the student who struggles the most can read it independently. Those are the students who end up believing they are “bad at Spanish,” and who don’t continue to the next level.

I have to be honest with you. I tend to write for the top 10%. I get greedy! I think, “Oh, this word would be so juicy here,” and I add it because it makes me happy. But then, the next day, can every student read that text on their own?

Adam’s answer: you can still write the big, juicy paragraph if you want. Then give students a simpler version the next day. You can have your cake and eat it, too.

New to Write and Discuss? I talked about it and what to do after it in a recent episode.

Strategy 2: Focus on verbs (only verbs)

I asked Adam what he was thinking about when he co-created a text with his class. His answer: only frequent verbs.

Not rejoinders, not prepositional phrases. Those are fun and good, but when you only have a little time, you have to choose. Adam said that if students finish Level 1 able to use that core set of high-frequency verbs quickly and confidently, you have done a fantastic job. Anything else they get is gravy.

This connects with something I tell the teachers in the Academy all the time: when everything is important, nothing is important. And I am telling that to myself, too, because I fall into that trap.

Strategy 3: No time to learn Write and Discuss? Backward plan from a short book

Adam shared a shortcut for the teacher who walks into class tomorrow without time to learn a new strategy.

Start with the short book students will read, find its core phrase, and do one oral activity that introduces it. Then students read the book.

His example: one of his books is called Somos Basura (“We Are Trash”), and kids think it is hilarious. The core phrase is “This is art / this is not art.” So he shows a slideshow: the Mona Lisa, the Statue of Liberty… then graffiti, a haircut, a pile of bananas, a bag of trash. Students just respond: Es arte. No es arte.

After about 15 minutes of debating whether a bag of trash is art, students know the core phrase. Add soy, eres, es, and they are ready to read the book.

Strategy 4: Start silent sustained reading tomorrow, with $0

This is the idea I have been sharing with every teacher I meet, and I was waiting for this episode so you could hear it from Adam first.

Many of us (me included, for many years) get stuck: I don’t have the books. I don’t see my students every day. My students are novices. 

Adam’s reframe was so helpful. If students aren’t reading, it usually isn’t about the students. More often, they have the wrong text in front of them, or they haven’t had the right on-ramp to reading yet.

Here is the routine Adam described:

1. Do a short Write and Discuss at the end of class, written to struggling reader.
2. The next day, when students walk in, project yesterday’s text.
3. Everyone reads silently for 90 seconds to 3 minutes.

Adam pointed out that this does several things at once. You get a moment of beautiful silence. Students get to center themselves in the language and remember yesterday’s class. And, his favorite part, you are quietly building a routine for later in the year when you do free voluntary reading. 

From day 2, students learn: in this class, the first thing we do is sit down and read.

How I do it in my class: I put up the same kind of slide I use for free voluntary reading.