Title of Reading Strategy: READING CAROUSEL

Proponent: ZESA S. MINO, MAED

Applied in Level & Section: GRADE 12 BAP 2
No. of Students Involved: 32 students
Reading Strategy Description: The READING CAROUSEL is a jam packed reading
activity that teachers can do to help struggling readers enhance their comprehension.
The READING CAROUSEL activities activate the students’ schemata or background
knowledge that consequently arouse readers’ interest in the topic and prepare them
linguistically. The nomenclature of the strategy comes from the idea of a carousel which
goes round and round. In the strategy, the ideas of the readers are the highlight. The
readers shares ideas and thoughts with each other. The teacher in this strategy is only
a facilitator. Most of the activities in the READING CAROUSEL are facilitated by
students.

Procedure of the Strategy:

This activity for struggling readers in the senior high school helps the readers find
out what they already know about a topic and encourages them to share ideas about
topics before they read a text. To do this activity, the teacher chooses four topics that
relate to the text that would be useful for students to think about before reading. Then,
the teacher takes a large piece of paper and divide it into four triangles by drawing
diagonal lines from opposite corners. At the center of the piece of the four triangles,
topics will be written. Four students sit around the piece of paper and are given a time
limit of one minute. They write as many ideas as possible relating to the topic in their
triangle. When the time’s up, they rotate the piece of paper and have another minute.
This time, they read the ideas already written down and add new ones to it. After a
minute, they rotate the paper again and add more ideas. Repeat one last time until all
students have written in each triangle. They then read all the ideas in each triangle.

Before the onset of reading activity, the teacher shows the text on the television
for just 20 seconds. The idea is for them to get as much information as possible in a
short space of time so they scan the text for key words that include the most important
information. Next, images related to the text will be shown and students work together
to write down all the words they can see in the images or related to the images. This
activity helps predict words that might appear in the text and extends students’
vocabulary.

The teacher makes a list of new words that students need to define using their
dictionary in their respective cellular phones. Selected students will be called to share
what meaning was found out in the dictionary. The final stage is to check that all
students understand all the words with a quick team game that reviews all the new
words.

The teacher sets a realistic time limit for students to read the text and give them
a general question to answer before they read. A typical task could be to choose the
best title for a text. The teacher could ask students to raise their hand as soon as they
know the answer to the task. This is an unobtrusive way of seeing how quickly each
student reads the text and which students need to increase their reading speed.

After reading, students work in pairs and write a few comprehension questions
based on the text. They must know the answers. This is a great way of reviewing
question forms and helping students write questions correctly. Then, they give their
questions to another group and answer the other group’s questions. Finally, they give
their answers to the original group who correct them. Students love correcting each
other’s answers.

Next, students work in groups and write two true and two false sentences about
the text. They give their sentences to another group who have to decide which are true
and which are false, and correct the false ones. Finally, they give their answers to the
original group who correct them. Again, they love correcting each other’s answers. For
any intensive reading task, the teacher encourage students to highlight the part of the
text that gives them the answer. This trains them to always look for justification in the
text to support their answer and helps you see which students are able/not able to find
this information in a text. This is a technique they can be encouraged to use in a reading
test or exam.
Documentation: