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The Phantom of the Opera: developing reading strategies in class

The project entitled The Phantom of the Opera: developing reading strategies

in class was developed in a group from the third year of high school at a federal school

located in Rio Grande do Sul. The project was a requirement for Estágio de Docência

em Língua Inglesa II and it lasted for twenty hours, totalizing two and a half months of

teaching practice. The class was composed by 28 students between 16 and 18 years

old.

Working with literature in English classes is a challenge for students and

teachers since reading long texts is usually not part of the syllabus in public schools.

Considering that developing reading skills was one of the objectives of the term and

after getting to know the students’ interest in fantasy and horror stories, we proposed

a project based on the graded reader (Stage 1) of The Phantom of the Opera1 (original

novel written by Gaston Leroux in 1910). The aim of this article is to present our

lesson plan and explain the tasks we designed to guide the students and engage them

in reading the book in class.

The graded reader has twenty-four pages and is divided in ten chapters. In

order to organize the class activities and make sure that the students would finish the

book, we designed reading tasks for each chapter. For the final production, the

students would write a comment about some aspects of The Phantom of the Opera or

relate the story to their lives, using conditional sentences, the linguistic structure

focused in the project.

1 BASSETT, Jennifer (Ed.). The Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 1: The Phantom of the Opera.

Oxford: Oxford Bookworms ELT, 2007.

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The classes

The first class was dedicated to introducing the project. To do so, we asked the

students whether they believed in ghosts and if they knew any ghost stories. Some of

them answered affirmatively and shared their beliefs with the classmates. Others

explained why they did not believe in such supernatural creatures. Most of the

students did not know anything about The Phantom of the Opera, and, for this reason,

we showed them a teaser of the book with some key information about the novel.

Their task was to make notes while watching the video in order to get input for a

preliminary discussion about the theme of the novel. The conversation started with

their impressions and inferences based on the teaser, and, after that, we browsed

Broadway’s website to find more details about the play. Finally, the students watched

the teaser of the musical. The objective of this overview was to show that, by having

been repeatedly published and broadcasted in different genres over many years, The

Phantom of the Opera had become a classic.

The next step was a task to explore the students’ expectations in relation to the

plot. In small groups, the students were given a set of images that illustrate the graded

reader. The objective was to order the images in such a way that the story would make

sense. After some time, each group presented their hypotheses to the class and

exchanged ideas regarding their interpretation of the images and their inferences

about the plot.

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Figure 1 – Building expectations about the plot of the story based on the images of the

book (BASSET, 2007)

The final step of the first class was reading the introduction to the story – the

description of the setting (the Opera House) and the main character (the Phantom). In

order to make the students feel comfortable in their first contact with the text, we

designed a task that combined reading and drawing abilities: the students were asked

to draw the Opera House and the Phantom based on what they read. After presenting

the drawings to their classmates, the whole group elected the Opera House and the

Phantom that most matched the descriptions. These drawings were placed in the

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beginning of a timeline that we created throughout the classes in order to keep track

of the plot as the students read each chapter.

We designed two tasks for chapter one, which was read in the second class. In

the first one, we cut some parts of the text and put them in a separate box. The

students were asked to fill in the blanks with the excerpts.

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Figure 2 – Filling the blanks with parts of the text (chapter 1)

After that, in small groups, the students were asked to order paragraphs. This

task was a step further concerning reading comprehension since the students had to

understand the text in order to organize the paragraphs in a reasonable way.

Figure 3 – Ordering paragraphs (chapter 1)

We started the third class with a conversation to recollect which characters

were mentioned in chapter one, checking the students' comprehension before

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beginning the second chapter. Afterwards, the next two tasks focused on listening.

Using a dialogue in chapter two, we planned a task in which the students listened to a

part of the story (audio of the book) and ordered the sentences accordingly.

Figure 4 – Listening and ordering a dialogue (chapter 2)

In the second task students were asked to choose, among three different

options (we made up two of the alternatives), the letter they considered more

appropriate in the story. After choosing the one that they considered adequate to the

plot, we played the audio of the book for the students to check their answers.

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Figure 5 – Listening and choosing the correct letter (chapter 2)

To finish chapter two, the students were asked to read the text in order to

prepare for a game. In two teams, the students had to answer a quiz (10 questions)

about what they had read. All the questions had four options and only one correct

answer.

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Figure 6 – Quiz game (chapter 2)

The fourth class focused on chapter three. In pairs, the students read the text

matching each paragraph with an image that illustrated it2. The students had to

understand what was happening in the plot and interpret each image in order to

answer appropriately.

2 The images were taken from operaghost.ru/comic_inn.htm

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Figure 7 – Matching paragraphs to images: images (chapter 3)

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Figure 8 – Matching paragraphs to images: text (chapter 3)

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At this point of the project we realized that we would not have time enough to

cover all the book with tasks for each chapter. Consequently, we changed our planning

and designed a task for the next chapters in such a way that we could conclude the

story in class.

Having said that, the fifth class was used to prepare the students for this

activity. After organizing the class in small groups and assigning a chapter to each one

of them, we gave time for the students to read their corresponding chapters and share

ideas about what they had read, in order to prepare a presentation to their classmates

in a way that they all could understand the plot. We stimulated the groups to use their

imagination to decide on how to present the chapters, which proved to be a

productive idea considering that some groups performed plays, others recited excerpts

from the book or explained the plot in their own words. Although this task was not

planned in the beginning of the project, the results were excellent since the students

managed to read and understand the assigned chapter and were able to tell the story

to their classmates in different ways. So the sixth class (when they presented the

chapters) had a very pleasant atmosphere because everyone was participating,

contributing to the whole group’s understanding of the story in a very dynamic way.

Since students sometimes get distracted in presentations, we planned a task

for them to concentrate and give feedback to the other groups. Students were asked

to write down comments about their classmates’ presentations considering:

a) what they could understand from the presentation;

b) good aspects of the presentation;

c) what the group could improve in their work and performance;

d) questions for the group.

This exercise was interesting to check the students' comprehension and

engagement. Based on their participation and comments, most of the students

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seemed to have enjoyed the activity. Most of the comments highlighted positive points

of the presentations and also suggested some improvements.

The following class was focused on recollecting the plot and making

hypotheses. In order to do that, we planned a conversation in which the groups could

talk about their chapters and everybody could make questions about aspects of the

story that had not been clarified in the previous class. Based on what students brought

up, we completed the timeline that we had started in the first class, ordering

important moments of the story and systematizing the plot. After having done that, it

was time to introduce the final production, which was writing some hypotheses based

on The Phantom of the Opera having in mind one of these aspects:

a) If I were the Phantom of the Opera, I would…

b) If I were the Phantom of the school, I would…

c) If I were Christine Daaé, I would…

d) If I were the author of the book, I would...

With these options, the students could put themselves in the Phantom’s shoes

either thinking about the plot or about their own reality in school. Also, they had the

opportunity to say what they would do if they were Christine Daaé - one of the main

characters - or what they would change in the plot if they were the author of the book.

In order to prepare the students for the task, we explained how to make

hypotheses in English, and gave them a handout with examples. The next step was to

practice the structure with a number of sentences. While students did the exercise

individually, we walked around the classroom and solved doubts.

Continuing the work with conditionals, in the eighth class, we proposed an oral

practice. This task had the objective of systematizing the previous class and preparing

the students to finally write their hypotheses to share them with their classmates.

Seated in a circle, the students had to form sentences using the information that

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appeared on a Power Point presentation. We brought a small ball to class, and each

student would throw it to the next player.

Figure 9 – Practicing conditionals

This task was interesting to bring up questions about conditionals and clarify

doubts they still had. Besides, the students had fun trying to make up sentences, and

this was an opportunity for them to help each other. Having done that, they were

ready to start writing the first draft of their hypotheses. The feedback notes to the

students focused on their creativity, the use of conditionals and ideas to improve their

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texts. In the ninth class, the students received their texts back and produced their final

version. Then they shared their hypotheses with their classmates.

To conclude the project, in the tenth class the students were asked to fill out an

evaluation in order to reflect on their self-development and learning. Also, they could

suggest improvements for future developments of the project.

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Figure 10 – Final evaluation of the project

Since the students were curious about the musical of The Phantom of the

Opera, we watched the movie in class to wrap-up the project. While watching the

movie they were able to establish connections with their reading and compare both

genres.

The project The Phantom of the Opera: developing reading strategies in class

proved that it is possible to read long texts in English classes, even with basic groups. It

is crucial to pay attention to the students’ profile: the reading must be relevant in

order to motivate them. Also, the reading of a text demands lesson planning, the tasks

developed in class must match the reading purpose of the genre in order to guide

students throughout the reading and have them develop reading strategies. Moreover,

planning reading classes and designing tasks demand an awareness of the fact that

reading is not only decoding sentences but using what was read to do something: to

discuss, to act out, to comment, to share ideas. We consider that this project was

successful because the students not only read a book in English, improved their

reading skills and learned about English literature, but also actively participated in class

making questions, thinking about hypotheses, explaining the plot to their classmates

and giving opinions about the book.