Academic Reading Process

Four Easy Steps to Student Understanding

The proficient use of these four steps when reading informative text from the humanities will almost guarantee student engagement in and understanding of that text.

Rules

  • Steps must be followed in order.
  • Students must practice each step with teacher feedback and develop proficiency before moving to the next step.
  • Once proficient, this process should become routine when deep understanding of informational text is a necessary part of student learning (as part of the research process, synthesis and speech preparation, etc.).

Step 1

Identifying Key Words

  1. Beginners should start by reading each sentence independently and underlining the fewest words possible that contain the most important information. When students review their underlined words, the information should make sense.
  2. Once established in the process, students can read multiple sentences or whole paragraphs at a time and underline the fewest words while retaining the most pertinent information.
  3. Instructional Strategy: Model with input first sentence or two. Discuss/justify chosen words.
  4. Formative assessment ideas: Review large group, student shares choices w/partner, teacher collects larger body of key words (multiple paragraphs) to give feedback.

Step 2

Identifying Main Concepts

  1. Once key words/information have been identified for a section or paragraph, students should think about the information they have underlined and ask themselves: “What is the author’s message to the reader in this section?” or “What am I supposed to think, know, understand, or feel about this information?”
  2. The answer to these questions should be written in the margin next to the paragraph or section. This is now considered a main concept.
  3. These main concepts should be written in complete sentence form.

Step 3

Graphically Organize Information in Outline Form

Instructional Strategy: Before beginning Step 3, create a lesson that teaches students about categorizing and degree of value.

  1. Once the key words have been underlined and main concepts written in the margin, those notes need be transferred into an outline form.
  2. The main concepts from step two are the headings. The key words from step one are the supportingdetails. One to three words per detail. One detail per line.
  3. The most important thing about the outline is for students to understand degree of value. It is not proper numbering, i.e. I, A, 1, a…. Let student number/bullet in a way that works for them. So long as their outlines line up correctly so when glancing at it, one can understand how each supporting detail falls under the heading, the outline has done its job.
  4. Good outlines can be read out loud and make sense.

Step 4

Outline Usage

  1. Outlines can be used in a number of ways depending on the learning objective.
  2. Write a summary of the text (Writing 4).
  3. Analyze patterns of information through single or multiple outlines (Writing 1, 2, 7, 8, 9).
  4. Determine author’s purpose/bias (Informational Text 6).
  5. Analyze paragraph/section structure (Information Text 5).
  6. Explore issues of credibility (Media Literacy 9).
  7. Condense information for study