Reading Zone

Reading Zone is a set of fiftyreading and comprehension sheets. They have been created to suit the teachingneeds of upper elementary school and lower secondary school students. The sheetshave been composed in ten thematic groups to establish a sense of continuity andto add more interest.The themes are: Champions,Children, Fairytales, Nursery Rhymes, Magic, Mythology, Fishing, Space, Nationsand Rodents.Each thematic set comprises offive different activity sheets. These sheets are: • Analytical Stories: In Reading Zone these are called "Logical Figure It Out". Students need to read the stories and fill out a data grid. The stories have been structured in such a way as to require students to analyse deeper than a direct correlation between the needed information and the written words. For example: "The Martian vessel was of the Flashspeedster class, which isn’t the type of spaceship that is equipped with the Megadestroyer weapon..." This sentence not only contains the directly correlated pieces of information that the ship was Martian and that it was of the "Flashspeedster" class, but also reveals that it did not possess the "Megadestroyer", which when it is processed along with other such "negative" information will lead the students to correctly inferring which spaceship did in fact possess the "Megadestroyer". • Check It Out: In these activities students are presented with two almost identical stories, which have ten differences between them. These differences do not affect the stories in any substantial way and both versions are grammatically correct. They are simply alternate ways of stating certain things. For example: "Strawberry pieces coated with glistening caramel syrup ..." can be rewritten as, "Strawberry bits coated with glistening caramel syrup ..." Obviously the objective is for the students to find and mark all ten differences. • Wrong Word Crosswords: The clues in these puzzles have deliberate "typos" or incorrect words in them. One word in each clue has been altered so that it is still a recognizable word but not the appropriate one. The students have to first find and correct the trick word in a clue before they can understand it, and then proceed as in a regular crossword. This makes these puzzles not only more fun and interesting but also offers an extra learning dimension. • Tile Search: This is essentially a wordsearch activity, however, the letters are placed in a tiled area different and more intricate than the usual type of puzzle consisting of regular squares. This is done to excite interest as well as to make the task somewhat more demanding. When students find all the required words they are left with several "leftover" letters. These letters must be used to discover the mystery sentence. Clues are given to assist the students in reforming the mystery sentence. • Spot the Difference: These activities consist of two drawings in each set that look alike but contain ten subtle differences. This exercise is meant as a fun activity to increase student application and desire to continue the prescribed work. This activity engages students and challenges them to concentrate and examine the page of information before them, helping to stretch their attention span and extend their skills of observation.