Too often, students read science and history texts the same
way they read a short story or a novel. This
approach never works very well, and what’s more, it means that most students
have to waste lots of time re-reading material the night before a test.
Why do students approach these texts this way? Schools use fiction to teach how to
read. Developing reading skills are
reinforced in language arts and English classes with more fiction. Students become adept at reading novels,
short stories, poetry, and plays, but very few schools teach students how to
approach informational material. The
unstated assumption is that if students know how to read one type material,
they can read anything with equal ease.
If only this were true.
I find most students, at best, have a partial understanding
of how they should approach informational texts (history and science). They begin at the beginning and read straight
through. They underline or, worse,
highlight facts as they read. They do
this because they realize this content is important. When they get to the end of the assignment,
they close their books, and fifteen minutes later they would be hard pressed to
say much about what they had just read.
These students are not totally wasting their time, but they certainly
are not using it effectively.
When I was eighteen, I attended a wonderful school in
England. One of my courses was
zoology. At the end of the year, I had
to sit for an exam, as they say over there, and we students started to prepare for
it months in advance. I went back to a
topic I had read earlier in the year and discovered I had underlined thirty-two
consecutive pages of material. I had
thought every line was of equal importance.
Everything looked the same – thirty-two pages of blue underlining. Nothing stood out. I could not tell whether something was a main
concept or an example. I could not
differentiate one fact from another. A
lot of good that did me! I had to work
my way through those pages all over again.
Students need to read informational textbooks differently
than the way they read a piece of fiction.
They need to go beyond merely recognizing the importance of the content
and just underlining an important date or vocabulary word or concept. They need to learn how to interact with the
text in a cognitive way so that they begin the retention process as they read,
and they need to use an annotation technique that makes the material stand out.
But there is an important step that
students should perform before they start reading and annotating.
The first strategy students should use is to ask why this
material was assigned. The answer will
give a sense of purpose, a reason for reading the assignment. By knowing what the teacher wants them to
know, they will be more likely to look for certain information as they read.
Then they should take about a minute to skim through the
assignment, noting titles and headings, words in bold type, and some of the
captions. They should look at the material
written in the wrap (that is the name of the white space around the text in
which editors place key points, questions, and other helpful material). They should ask a question or two as they
skim. If they are looking at a chapter
about Cortes, for example, they might ask, “Who was Cortez?” “Why is he so important?” These questions do not have to be very
sophisticated. Students should also read
some of the questions at the end of the unit so that they know what the authors
thought was important. When they then proceed to read, they should be
on the lookout for some of the answers.
This strategy is called pre-reading.
It gives students a kind of mental roadmap. They will have a better sense of where they
are going and how they are going to get there while they read. More importantly, they have created a
framework to which to attach the content.
Most students make the mistake of looking at the assignment
that they wrote down in class, reaching for the text, opening it to the proper
page, and begin reading. By failing to
take a minute to skim through the assignment, they have actually made the
learning process more difficult. Pre-reading
is an important step. It gives relevancy
to the material. Our brain finds
learning to be easier when it can hook new information to something it already
knows. When we understand why the
material is important, we are more likely to learn it.
By priming the brain with this simple pre-reading exercise, the
student will have laid the groundwork that helps in the process of forming
long-term memory. By spending one
additional minute on the assignment, the way has been paved to start memorizing
content. An additional minute is a small
price to pay for improving the effectiveness with which a student reads. Of course, there is more to reading than this
simple exercise. The student also has to
annotate the text and then spend a final 30-60 seconds in a post-reading
exercise. But pre-reading is an
important first step.
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