Up and Away - National Council for Curriculum and Assessment

Section 5 Examples of classroom activities
Strategy 2 – Keyword exercises
Introduction
Keyword exercises are an excellent way to prepare pupils for reading texts. New vocabulary is introduced
in context, so making it easier to understand. The new vocabulary immediately becomes part of pupils’
knowledge and supports them in the reading exercise to follow.
Level of text
Third class.
Level of learner
A2.
Time
40 minutes.
Source material: Worldwise 1. J. Hourihane & C. Ó Loingsigh
(Revised edition, 1995). The Educational Company of Ireland.
Approach
1. Liaise with the mainstream teacher and select a reading text. Pick out words which are important for
understanding the text.
2. Design a worksheet based on the words and containing a dictionary activity which involves copying
definitions from the dictionary. Example tasks are:
Matching the key words with pictures – see next page.
Pupils predicting (using visuals if possible) which words are in the text.
Make a class set of photocopies plus a few extra.
3. Introduce the theme to generate interest and motivation – see ‘Making a spidergram 2’ on page 169.
4. Hand out the worksheets and one dictionary per pair. If the worksheets contain visuals, use them to
introduce vocabulary. Pupils look up the meaning of the words and complete the task.
5. Pupils read the text (or relevant parts) and see if they matched or predicted correctly.
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