CHARACTER ROLE PLAY: Each student takes one of the central characters in the article. The teacher can add more. Students with the same roles discuss their characters and plan what they will say in the role play. The teacher sets the scene for the role play.
STUDENT DECIDED ROLES: The teacher outlines the nature / situation [...]

Ideas to provide students with the language to move from the news article into conversation.
EXPONENTS TO MOVE FROM ARTICLE TO CONVERSATION: Providing suitable exponents can enable learners to more confidently talk about a text they have in front of them. It is quite natural for anyone armed with a newspaper, magazine or book to want [...]

Activities to aid students’ reading or listening comprehension and to reduce the cognitive burden and pressure of “cold” reading / listening.
GAP FILL: A traditional exercise in which students reinsert words that have been taken out of a text:
Put the words on the bottom into the correct gaps.
Landmine elephant gets new foot

EXAMPLE: New developments in ________ [...]

Pre-reading and pre-listening ideas to ease students into interaction with the article, expose them to vocabulary and ideas and thus make the article easier to negotiate.
TRUE/FALSE CHOICE: Create a series of true/false sentences. For each proposition, include one sentence that is true and its false partner.

Circle the sentence that you think is correct
Google wants to [...]

Many of these activities are intended for five- to ten-minute bursts of activity, although many could be used for extended fluency practice.
WORDS BRAINSTORM: Teacher writes a keyword related to the news article on the board. Students spend one minute brainstorming all of the words they associate with that keyword. Students talk about the words in [...]

English Skill Level: All
Grade Level: All
Background
Family literacy is based on the belief and related research that students will be more successful in school if their parents prepare and support them. Family literacy was first developed to prepare emergent readers for school success by giving information and activities that parents could use with their children to [...]

English Skill Level: All
Grade Level: All
Background
Content-based second language instruction (CBI) grew out of a response against curriculum built around grammar points. In CBI, the curriculum is built around a topic, theme, or subject area. Students learn another language via subject matter. CBI proponents believe that students are more likely to learn authentic and communicative language [...]

English Skill Level: Advanced Beginning to Advanced
Grade Level: Elementary to Adult
Background
This approach was developed by Anna Chamot and J. Michael O’Malley to help secondary-level students make a successful transition into their regular high school classes. The cognitive academic language learning approach (CALLA) is a three-pronged approach focusing equally on academic language learning, academic content learning, [...]

English Skill Level: All
Grade Level: All
Background
Whole language philosophies or approaches focus on the use of authentic language that is meaningful to students, proceeding from whole to part and integrating development of language modes and domains. This approach is a constructivist philosophy of learning that places emphasis on the integration of language and content, fostering personally [...]

English Skill Level: Advanced Beginning to Intermediate
Grade Level: Elementary to Adult
Method: Natural Approach
Background
An approach or method developed in the 1970s by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell emphasizing that people “acquire” languages best by learning naturally like children do. Krashen and Terrell believed that comprehension should precede production and that students should not be forced to [...]