To fully understand a text, you must view reading as an ACTIVE rather than a PASSIVE activity. In other words, just running your eyeballs over the words on a page does not mean you will comprehend the meaning of a text. You must engage your brain in an active way.
To learn how to do that, you must first look at what kinds of things readers can do while engaging in a text.
- Summarize: Every once in awhile, you should stop, look at a portion of text you just read, and try to summarize the content in your own words. This is a good way to test your understanding of the material.
- Make Predictions: To keep your brain fully engaged in the text, you should make predictions about what you think might happen next based on what you already know. It’s always fun to see if your predictions are accurate.
- Formulate Opinions: We have opinions on everything from the weather to politics. When you are reading, allow yourself to form opinions about the characters, the plot, the style of the writing, etc.
- Make Connections: A good way to understand something that is new and unfamiliar to you is to connect it to something you already know or have experienced. Can you connect the text you are reading to a personal experience? Does it remind you of something else you’ve read or seen?
- Ask Questions: Don’t expect that you are going to understand everything in the reading with complete clarity the first time through. What don’t you understand? What confuses you? What words are unclear to you?
- Analyze the Author’s Craft: As you are reading, you may notice certain things about the writer’s style. Is there a lot of description? Is there too little description? Is the reading easy to follow or difficult in some way? Does the author use a lot of literary devices like similes and metaphors? Do you understand how and why the author is using such devices?
- Reflect/React/Comment: What do you notice? What surprises you? How do you feel about what you are reading? What do you think about what you are reading?
- Look for Patterns/Repetitions: What do you notice about the way the text is structured? Do you notice some kind of pattern? Is there some element in the text that is repeated? What is important about this pattern or these repetitions? How does the structure contribute to the overall meaning?
How about you-what do you do to engage in texts and tasks? What strategies work best for you and for your students?
