Post-Reading activities

This lesson provides a discussion about the importance of a post-reading activities as a successful
completion of the reading process, as a meaningful and pleasurable reading experience, and as an
extension of critical reading challenge. Post reading techniques involve engagement activities in
listening, speaking, reading and writing which promote reading as the medium and integration of
listening, speaking, reading and writing as the mode to fully maximize the benefits of the reading
process and to positively develop creative thinking of emergent learners.

Post-reading activities

Engaging activities are essential to emergent reading because these activities sustain the students
interest and active involvement in any reading activities. These engaging activities extend students
reading experiences, comprehension, appreciation and social interaction develop children’s love for
reading.

Post reading activities may vary. Post reading does not automatically require and is strictly limited to
another reading activity. Instead, these would depend:

 On the skills being developed in the reading process,

 On the grammar points introduced in the reading text,
 On the theme emphasized to the kids,
 On the elements of the genre presented such as characters and plot, especially to beginning
readers.

Moreover, these post-reading activities may be elicited from listening, speaking, reading and writing
skills, social and physical skills, games and play, and artworks which certainly enrich the emergent
readers’ love reading.

 Listening that may be used as engaging activities include listening to songs, CD/DVD materials
for rhymes, riddles, poems, phonemes, pronunciations, spelling, listening to recorded
conversations, narration and description.
 Speaking that may be used as extension activity and social interaction include circle time, group
singing, poem reciting, dramatizing, role-playing, narrating, describing, retelling, shared reading,
imitating sounds of animal characters and other prominent object in the story, sharing one’s
experiences.
 Reading taken as extended experience includes reading a similar story or theme, reading a story
having the same animal characters and human characters like prince and princes, mother,
friends or important person’s in the kid’s life, shared reading, silent reading of one’s personal
choice of related story, arranging events through picture cues, prop stories
 Writing considered as post reading activity includes leisure wring such as greeting cards, letter
writing, simple notes. However, it is important to bear in our mind that the writing outputs are
from emergent learners. Therefore, writing activities given to them may be the informal ones
and that elicit only self-expression.
 Games, play and artworks are very attractive to kids and they are always excited to have these
kinds of activities because they learn through play and social interaction, and more importantly
may develop their cognitive and physical skills. Kids must be allowed to have finger painting,
 drawing, face puppets, finger or hand puppets, clay or play dough, manipulative toys. Further,
they happily get into group singing and dancing, running around, relay games, word games,
spelling games, story puzzles and other worksheets.

It is always necessary for students to be involved in reading. Therefore, extension activities must allow
them to realize and experience the pleasure of reading. In this manner, they will look forward to another
reading activity and that they will instantly develop their love for reading.

Above all these post-reading techniques are the framework which intend to develop the creative
thinking of young readers by allowing them to actively construct meaning for themselves and by helping
them to use their previous learning and to connect them to new information.

Reading-writing connection

Reading and writing are interrelated since reading provides input to the child and input is
significantly transferred to writing as the output. Further, both reading and writing provide language
input and language use. Thus, as the child experiments with reading, he applies his own knowledge
about the language of reading which allows him to write.

Observe how an emergent learner constructs his own writing after reading. He normally invents
spelling of the names of characters, invents labels of objects through drawing, does letter string in his
attempt to copy labels or prints, and continues to reinvent and to use trial and error. These
characteristics are distinct to emergent learners as a critical thinker since both reading and writing
involve cognitive processes which develop critical thinking. The following are their writing attempts as
young learners:

 Invented spelling
 Writing-like activities, such as letter-like forms
 Random letter writing
 Marking in papers and even on walls and,
 Emulating adult-writing