Low-Prep Post-Reading Activities & Games for Language Teachers: Enhance Comprehension and Communication with Carrie Toth

Carrie Toth, an author and Spanish educator with over 30 years of experience, joined me this week on Growing with Proficiency The Podcast episode 62 and shared so many low-prep post-reading activities and games designed to engage students with more reading.

Episode 62 is part of the series, “Making Comprehensible and Communicative Language Teaching Easy,” since Carrie shares with us strategies that enrich language comprehension and communication but don’t require a ton of time to prepare.

You’ll discover or re-discover tools like Gimkit and Quizlet,  and dynamic group activities such as ‘Freeze Find’ and ‘Game of Quotes,’ ideal for fostering student collaboration and enhancing language understanding.

Carrie further explained to us how games like ‘Musical Chairs Retell’ and ‘Yellow Brick Retell’ can help students go over main events of a book or reading while keeping the affective filter low.

Three Types of Individual Low-Prep Activities

First, Carrie shared her three kinds of individual activities she uses with her students. The first is when you use a simple worksheet or comprehension questions. This is great to use when you are feeling a little tired that day. Next, you can also have an exit ticket or pass out mini whiteboards and everybody show their answers to  the questions you call out. Carrie also uses Gimlet and Quizlet. 

Low-Prep Group Activities

Next, we chatted about group activities. I don’t know about your students, but my students shared with me that they want more group activities. Carrie also exclaimed that she loves group activities! Carrie explained that, with group activities, students are hearing the other kids talk about what they didn’t understand about the story which helps them talk among themselves so they all can have a better understanding. 

I shared with Carrie that I’ve had trouble letting go and letting the students work in group activities. Carrie agreed that this can be a common problem among language teachers, but the students crave these interactions and it’s good for them. 

I asked Carrie what her go-to group activities were that she uses for her students, and she shared some of her low-prep group activities. Carrie likes to gamify comprehension questions that she would otherwise use on a worksheet. For example, she likes to play the Unfair Game that she learned from a fellow world language teacher. 

To play, you have a large game board with numbers and behind those numbers is an amount of points. The group that answers a question correctly gets to choose to keep the points or give them away. Which ever group has the points closest to zero, wins. It’s fun to see them get competitive, and they’re listening to the comprehension questions that you would have done in a different way. 

More Low-Prep Games

Listen to episode 62 where Carrie shared another fun group game called Freeze Finds. Game of Quotes is another fun game that Carrie and I talked about that she learned from Anne Marie Chase. To start, when you’ve read three, four, or five chapters, put students in a small group and have them play Game of Quotes. Carrie continued, “You post little images, people have them all over the internet, so you don’t even have to make up your own scenarios. They have to go through the text that you’ve read so far to find something that would be funny or cute or would fit that prompt.”

For example, “What is something that you will never say to your mom? Or why is a perfect excuse that you will tell to your teacher?” Then they have to go to the chapter again with your group, and then vote which one is the best sentence or quote from the book?

Follow-Up Activities That Are Low-Prep

I asked Carrie what were some of her follow-up activities that she uses in her classes. The first one she shared was Musical Chairs Retell. You have four to six students sit at a table and you set a timer for one minute. The students start to write what happened in the book or story starting from the beginning. When the timer goes off, they move to the next paper and continue. She increases the time as they start to move around the table so they have time to read what is already there. Let them review. Basically, they’re rereading and retelling the text.

Another version of this is the snowball game where they stay seated and write until the timer goes off and then wad up their paper and throw it. Then, the students pick up another snowball and do the same activity as the original version. They love throwing the paper ball and the movement is good for them while they are retelling the story. 

Carrie shared a few more activities with us so listen to episode 62 above, on your favorite podcast player, or here to hear our whole conversation. Don’t forget to check out the links below.