Step 1: Pick a text!
Step 2: Read your text.
Before you can start any activity creation, you need to pick a text. You can start with a text you find or do a search for a text with a specific theme.
Read your text! Look at it from the perspective of your students. You want to start looking for vocabulary that might cause problems, areas to discuss to prepare students for reading, any new grammar points, cultural information that might be confusing, etc.
Step 3: Get your materials!
Step 4: Pre Reading
Step 5: During Reading
Step 6: Post Reading
Get your materials together to plan your activity. I like to use paper and pen/pencil. This helps me organize my ideas before I type them up. The choice is yours as to how you want to plan.
Using the areas that you found in Step 2, divide out how you are going to address them. I recommend to have sections that activate prior knowledge, target vocabulary, explain new grammar points, and target cultural differences.
Look at your text to determine what information you want the students to focus on as they read. This information will be what they use in the post reading phrase. Once you have pinpointed what you want them to focus on, then create a graphic organizer to help them focus on that information and record it for later use.
Divide your work here into two parts.
Part 1: Create some reading comprehension questions that check students' undersanding of the text as it relates to major information. You don't want questions on picky details that aren't crucial to students understanding the text.
Part 2: Create a synthesis activity where students have to use the information they got from the text. This is an excellent place to work in a writing activity.
Step 7: Unit Connections
Step 8: Connections
Now that you have your activity finished, look for the best place to add it to your curriculum. It may fit into an existing unit or it may be the kernel of a new unit.
Remember that there are many more text out in the wider work that can be adding into this activity.
The picture that linked you to this part is the back of the brochure and could be used to help students get more ideas to add to their connected writing activity - the itinerary of their trip.