If you see your student at home struggling with his/her reading assignments, make sure that they are being active readers.
ACTIVE READING is a strategy that is taught to students during their freshmen and sophomore year in English class. They are then encouraged to use this technique in other subject areas to help with reading comprehension.
Active Reading Strategies
Step 1: Before you read
· Preview:
ü Skim reading selection
ü Look at title, bold-faced words, subtitles, pictures, footnotes, etc.
ü Try to mentally predict the topic of your reading selection.
· Chunk:
ü Break reading selection into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Step 2: Apply these techniques to each chunk while you are reading.
· 1st read:
ü Read to understand main idea or point of the text
ü Visualize: create mental images of the main details
ü Define vocabulary in context
ü Check for understanding: make sure you understand the main details. If not, reread!
· 2nd read:
ü Mentally interact with the text: QPIC
Ø Questioning: Ask questions about what is happening in the chunk. Propose answers for these questions based on what is supplied by the text.
Ø Predicting: Make an intelligent and believable guess about what you think will happen next based on the clues from the text. Tell why you think this will happen.
Ø Inferring: Draw conclusions or express opinions about what you read. Explain why you feel this way.
Ø Connecting: Relate to the reading by explaining a similar circumstance that you are familiar with. Could be something that happened to you, something that happened to someone else, something you saw on TV or a movie, something you read in a book or magazine etc…