Harry Potter in the class?
 

Hi everyone,
I have a private class where the boy wants to read Harry Potter 3 in English (he´s read 1&2). Does anyone have any ideas of how to make this more interesting, with some activities or questions for each chapter or something? I´ve searched on the internet and all the Harry Potter web pages I find that seem to have interesting activities, you have to pay for. Can anyone tell me if there´s one somewhere which might be of some use to me, or any other ideas you may have?
Thanks

Re: Harry Potter in the class?
 

Hmm the kid wants to read it with you eventhough he has read the others? Did he read them by himself? What's his English like? I suggest reading a page or two in class and then assign a few more pages as homework. The you can read it yourself and talk about it in the next class where you can discuss certain characters. I think that if you teach only reading in the class then it will be very boring but it's hard to do anything interesting until the student (and you) know more about the book and one of the ways is assigning a certain number of pages as homework. Just an idea

Re: Harry Potter in the class?
 

Hi - if he's read 1 and 2 he must be fairly advanced - unless you mean that he's read them in his own language? If so, and he's not an advanced learner, reading the whole of book three in English would be tough and unlikely to acheive much. Two possibilities :

If he's advanced :

• Let him read the book in English at his own pace for homework. At the start of each lesson he summarises for you, in English what he's read. (speaking practice), and you use extracts from those chapters for detailed comprehension, structural development or vocabulary work - as seems necessary.
• Get hold of the DVD. Show him a scene from the section he's just read, but with no sound. Afterwards give him an "observation test" : What was there on the left of Professor Snape's desk? What was Hermione wearing? Who was Harry talking to when Dumbledore walked in? (more speaking practice)
• Then set some general comprehension questions : What does Harry want to do? Where is Hermione going? What's Ron's problem? and play the extract again with sound.(listening practice)
• After checking the answers give him a gapped transcript and ask him if he can predict the missing words. he then listens again to check his answers. (language development)
• For homework you could also get him to write about the books : Who is your favourite character and why? Which character do you like least and why? Would you like to go to a school like Hogwarts - why or why not? Imagine you are Harry and write about a typical day in your life at Hogwarts.

There are also lots of Harry Potter websites that you could look at with him.

If he's only intermediate level :

• Tell him to get a copy of the book in his own language as well as in one English for you and to read his copy first. As he does so, each lesson he summarises for you, in English what happened in the chapters he just read (speaking practice). Help him express his ideas simply and feed in any necessary vocab - you'll need to have read the chapters yourself to be ready for the vocab which will come up.
• From the English versions, pick out some relatively simple passages from those chapters - keep them short and choose passages which use only the structures he's already learnt. Use them each lesson first for reading comprehension (his previous knowledge of the story will help get him over the language difficulties) and then vocabulary development.
• At this point you may also be able to use some extracts from the DVD as suggested above.

Re: Harry Potter in the class?
 

Ok, thanks guys. In answer to some of the questions, he said he read the other two in English classes last year, but I´m not sure if it was entirely in the class or some at home. His English is really good, I speak the entire lesson in English, and he has read the books in his language before so I´m sure that helps. Anyway I´ll let you know how it goes.

Re: Harry Potter in the class?
 

How's it going? I've just come across this article :
http://jalt.org/pansig/2005/HTML/Matsuzaki.htm
which is about using HP in drama activities with elementary school children. It could be useful ....

Re: Harry Potter in the class?
 

.... and here's a lesson plan based on HP.