Sharpen Reading Activities

In this activity, we reverse roles with the Learner: we become the student, and the Learner becomes the teacher. A word is displayed on the screen and we read it aloud. Sometimes the script will read the word correctly and sometimes it will read it incorrectly, providing a specific mispronunciation. The Learner's job is to evaluate whether we read the word correctly. When read incorrectly, we will engage the Learner in a dialogue to identify the specific pronunciation error that we made. Children love this activity. It is always fun to catch adults in errors and correct them. But don't let their enjoyment deceive you about the power of this activity. It involves a complex coordination of skills, from identifying the individual speech sounds in the pronounced word to comparing the sounds with the letters of the word on the screen. It is the foundation of the very important skill of self-correction, but presented in a context in which very few Learners are even aware that they are doing any "work."