By: Lesley Spillman

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Reading Strategies and Study Skills

• By Lesley Spillman
• Literacy 421
• Summer 2003

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Reading is best done when students are active
learners. To become active learners, students
need strategies that involve them in the process
of constructing meaning in reading and writing
and using new understandings in a functional
way(2003 55).

• Use prior knowledge as interact with text
• Summarize and organize as interact with text
• Think critically about text and create own
  elaborations
• Metacognitively aware
• Brozo, W.G., Simpson, M.L. (2003). Readers,
  Teachers, Learners Expanding Literacy Across the
  Content Areas (4th Ed.). New Jersey Merrill
  Prentice Hall

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Here are a few websites I found to help offer
tips and strategies for reading.
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Website 1http//learnweb.harvard.edu/2821/c3.cfm

• The author of this website is Stacy
  Gross-masters student at Harvard Graduate School
  of Education. She focuses on reading
  comprehension at the middle grade level. She
  provides students with two strategies for reading
  comprehension. She thinks middle school students
  may not readily identify or use an authors text
  structure. The first thing they must know is how
  to find information in a paragraph, chapter, or
  book and how to look efficiently.

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Website 1 cont.

• Concept mapping- student graphically illustrates
  relationships among key ideas in the text.
• Identifying text structure
• a. discuss general concept of patterns
• b. familiarize self with words and phrases
  associated with
• various conventional structures
• c. look over reading and practice asking self
  thinking
• questions
• Gross also provides names of software programs
  to use but stresses they should not be used just
  because they are out there.

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Website 2www.edletter.org/past/issues/1999-ja/sec
ondary.shtm/

• This website gives instruction to what secondary
  teachers can do to teach reading. It provides a
  reading definition and how to teach students to
  construct meaning to their text. Teachers not in
  the reading content think they should not be
  responsible for teaching reading, however it is
  occurring in many schools. Teachers can guide
  students through the texts so they will learn
  most effectively. They need to teach this by a
  schema theory.

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Website 2 cont.

• Pre-reading
• Acknowledge different contexts, experiences,
  biases, and background knowledge
• Promote students engagement and interest by
  providing a means to preview and anticipate the
  text
• Instruct students to ask and answer questions
  before reading
• Guided Reading
• Structured guidance to integrate knowledge and
  information students bring to text with the new
  provided by the text
• Engage students in probing text beyond literal
  meaning for deeper understanding

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Website 2 cont.

• Post Reading
• Give students ways to articulate understanding of
  what they read, test validity, and apply to
  situation or argue against the opposing side
• Teachers should best decide how to incorporate
  these activities into their teaching and they
  will be able to become more confident about
  students comprehension of words and also the
  text.

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Website 3www.how-to-study.com/read.htm

• This website is a link from the how-to website
  and tells characteristics of a good reader and
  how you might enhance your reading skills. Look
  at these to to see how you might need to change
  your reading skills.

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Website 3 cont.

• A good reader will
• Seize the main ideas
• Think about what the author is trying to say
• Be an active, not passive reader
• Concentrate on what you are reading
• Remember as much as possible
• Apply personal experiences to what you read
• Think about the subject before you read and what
  you learned after you read
• Skim the section you are going to read for
  anything familiar, new, or impressive
• Make notes of important parts to read for
  comprehension
• Recall to yourself whats just been read
• Discuss reading with teacher or another student

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Website 3 cont.

• This site also gives ways you can preview
  textbooks to become efficient readers.
• Read title and author of text
• Look to see when most recently published
• Read the table of contents
• Thumb through the book to get the overall rough
  idea
• Tell impression to teacher to help them make
  decisions
• Finally, repeat all of the above mentioned

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Website 4www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/Study/readin
g.html

• This website was created by the University of
  Waterloo at Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The
  homepage provides several categories teachers can
  find useful to engage in. The one I chose
  suffices tips for teachers to use in their
  classrooms for reading content.

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Website 4 cont.

• Each teacher should implement these strategies
• Get into material more often but for shorter
  periods of time
• Read groups of words at a time and without
  mouthing them
• Begin with an overview of material to improve
  comprehension and retention
• Read with a purpose- answer questions and note
  answers where they occur
• Set up the text so you can study effectively

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Website 5www.utexas.edu/student/utlc/handouts.htm
l

• This site was created by the University of Texas
  at Austin. They offer several study strategies
  for content areas other than reading. It does
  however provide links on reading study skills and
  strategies and how teachers should help their
  students learn them. The one I chose in more
  detail was on summarizing various pieces of
  reading. Many students do not know how to
  correctly summarize.

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Website 5 cont.

• Summarizing Paragraphs
• Read the paragraph twice
• Isolate the topic sentence and consider it to be
  your summary
• Underline key phrases and look for possible
  distinctions or contrasts from framework of
  paragraph
• Write your own summarizing sentence that makes
  use of key phrases or distinctions you noted

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Website 5 cont.

• Summarizing Articles
• Ask yourself questions about why article was
  written and who was intended audience
• Consider any biases or point of views due to
  background of the author
• Compare opening and closing paragraphs
• Read entire article more than once
• Underline key or repeated words or phrases
• Distinguish authors main idea from details that
  support the idea or are repetitious on the same
  theme
• Draft a several sentence summary that defines the
  main idea to account for the majority of the
  supporting material

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Website 5 cont.

• Summarizing Complex Articles
• Preview the article- skim headings and first
  sentences clarify any unknown terms with
  dictionary
• Read opening and closing paragraphs
• Read article more than once
• Isolate each important point and write down in
  complete sentence
• State the thesis of the article in one sentence
• Note how ideas are related (comparison/contrast,
  cause-effect, or problem-solution)
• Write a summary by reconstructing arguments from
  your list of important ideas using transitional
  phrases

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Website 6www.iss.stthomas.edu/studyguides/

• This website is sponsored by the University of
  St. Thomas. They provide efficient amounts of
  information on study skills for reading and other
  content areas. The reading skills goes more in
  depth on taking notes from a textbook, learning
  from multiple sources, reading/understanding
  essays, reading difficult material, speed and
  comprehension, marking and underlining, and the
  SQ3R method.

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Website 6 cont.

• SQ3R involves
• Survey the chapter of the book (headings,
  charts,
• pictures, questions, summaries, etc)
• Question while surveying (ask yourself questions
  about what teachers have said or what you already
  know about subject)
• Read the book (look for answers to questions
  found throughout chapter)
• Recite after you have read one section (take
  notes, orally ask yourself questions, see, say,
  hear, and write)
• Review by an ongoing process (days 1-5, weekends,
  and up until test time so you wont have to cram)

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Website 7www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html

• This website is sponsored by Mind Tools. If
  offers a list of reading strategies and provides
  examples on how you might fulfill these
  strategies. Mind Tools believes if you use these
  strategies you get the maximum benefit of reading
  with minimum effort.

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Website 7 cont.

• 1. Knowing what you need to know
• Ask what you want to know from reading text and
  examine text to see if it helps you move forward.
• 2. Knowing how deeply to read the material
• Read only chapter headings, introductions, and
  summaries. After this you may skim the material
  to get an overview of the subject.
• 3. Active Reading
• When reading in detail, highlight, underline, or
  annotate information you want to emphasize or
  important points you may want to refer back to at
  a later time.

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Website 7 cont.

• 4. Use table of contents to read different
  documents
• Different documents have information in
  different places and in different ways. It is
  broken down into the documents of magazines and
  newspapers, news articles, opinion articles, and
  feature articles.
• 5. Create own table of contents for reviewing
  material
• Compile your own table of contents before
  reading the document so that you will notice
  important information that has been left out or
  irrelevant details the author might have added.
• 6. Use glossary to help assimilate technical
  information
• Keep a dictionary close to you to look up
  difficult words. Note key concepts in your own
  words and refer to them when necessary. You might
  find it useful to use a concept map.