Make reading a piece of cake

Make reading a piece of cake

A week ago I had to practice in a 5^th course of secondary school, along with a friend. The idea was to introduce a reading strategy but with a metaphor, so we decided to explain the strategy by comparing it with baking, ergo the title ;).The strategy and metaphor have 4 elements: PREPARING, MIXING, BAKING and EATING. 

For the PREPARING part, we organize the ingredients and we see if don’t miss anything. Comparing this with the first element of the strategy, what we need to do before reading is to take a look at the whole text paying attention to the heading, lay out, graphics, pictures, etc., to identify what type of text is and to predict about what the text is going to be.

For the MIXING part, we put together all the ingredients. Comparing this with the second element of the strategy we have to look at the semantic field, looking for words similar to our mother tongue, repeated words or the ones we already know. Moreover, we need to identify the topic of the text.

For the BAKING part, we pay attention to the temperature of the oven and how much time we will bake the cake. On the strategy, this would be the third element where we read paragraph by paragraph, looking for details to understand the main ideas of them.

For the EATING part, we taste the cake and think about previous cakes we’ve made to see how they were. When we compare this part with the forth element of the strategy, it would be when we relate the text to ourselves, giving our opinion about the topic.

After explaining the strategy, we show the students a text and we read it all together but stopping after every element and discussing what we were able to find. 

The class went great, the student paid attention and answer to all the questions we asked. Now what we have to do is a second class where we are going to create an anchor chart for the students and guide them through the reading of another text.