Active Reading

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?

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Comments

[Jim Murdoch]

You might find the series of articles on slow reading here of some interesting:

http://johnmiedema.ca/2008/01/21/the-facets-of-slow-reading-a-series/

There should be a link there to my own article on close reading too.

[Angela Maiers]

Jim, speed is not always your friend as a reader! Looking forward to learning more about slow reading. Thanks for the resource.

[Josh More]

When I'm reading contracts or a book for a review, I keep a stack of post it notes next to me and tag the important passages. I find that this process requires me to read a bit more actively and keeps my attention on what I'm doing.

And it enables me to write better reviews.

[Deb]

It is such a paradigm shift for our teachers in moving reading from "passive" to "active". It comes back to you as an "experience"; I do not remember much from the time I was in middle or high school but I rememberthe experiences I had. Active learning needs to take place in every content area; we need more experiences!

[Angela Maiers]

Deb, you are right on. Learning is not the same as teaching. For learning to occur, the reader or learner must actively engage with the content making meaning for themselves. This is not learning was defined for many teachers and it is a hard paradigm to switch. Thanks for the insight and keeping your teachers with their eye on the ball.

[Angela Maiers]

Josh, great tip. This is such a simple way for learners to stay active on any text and a tool I share with students often. I can tell a successful reader from one who struggles just by counting the dog eared pages and height of the post it note stack! Thanks for sharing.

[Michelle TG]

First of all, thanks so much for creating and maintaining this blog, Angela! I've visited WHEN I can these past few months and I'm always finding something to think about in your posts.

To your list of what readers do while engaging in texts I'd add that they are constantly creating and ADJUSTING mental images of what they read. This has been one of my favorite strategies to discuss as I can specificially point to passages that have caused my personal "image" of the text to dramatically change as I read aloud to my kiddos every day. "Wow! My image just went from (this) to (this)!" my kids often hear me say.

Creating and maintaining/adjusting sensory images is certainly a sign of active reading.
-Michelle TG :-)

[Angela Maiers]

You are right on, Michelle. Creating images not only helps the reader/learner stay active during the reading but enhance memory and retention after reading. Thanks for adding this invaluable reading tool and for the feedback on the blog!