So Your Students Aren't Reading!?

Learn and Grow by Doing

Realize that students will need to understand texts before they can think critically about them. Sequence your activities and assignments to scaffold their development

 

Also remember Bloom's Taxonomy  ( http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html ). There are levels of knowing; recall and comprehension are at the lower end of the hierarchy of cognitive skills. Students need to remember and comprehend what they are reading before they can use higher-order skills such as analysis and evaluation.

Try to structure activities and assignments with this in mind. Use pre-reading strategies to gain student interest and scaffold their learning as they begin to read, during reading strategies to help them comprehend text, and post reading strategies to build higher-order thinking skills (Stephens and Brown, 2005).

A few examples of each follow:
Pre-reading activities (focus and scaffold)

1) Graphic organizer  - Show a concept map or other visual representation of the material to be covered in the reading - provides an opportunity to introduce new vocabulary as well as show relationships between new concepts

2) Think aloud - faculty chooses one section of the reading and begins to read, stopping to make explicit, the mental processes that are going on inside during reading. The purpose is to demonstrate the hidden mental processes that more skilled readers employ as they read for understanding. Tell students what you are doing and why. Give students a copy of the reading. As you read, pause to describe what you are thinking and how you are figuring things out and constructing meaning. Give students an opportunity to practice with each other.

3) Writing in Every Class - writing and reading go hand in hand and students should become more aware of the connections between the two, especially in the ways that they support learning! This strategy helps students to differentiate between three broad categories of writing: a) writing without composing (such as creating lists, brainstorming, and outlining), b) writing to learn (journals, logs,  quick writes, lab notebooks), and writing to demonstrate learning (essays, book reviews, research papers, creative writing, etc.). Introduce the three broad categories of writing to students. As a class, generate examples of each and discuss how they will be used in class. Take one category at a time and model specific types of writing within each. Give students time for practice and feedback. Point out the ways in which students can use all three types of writing activities to support their reading and learning. Suggest writing types for different reading assignments until students are able to take over.

During Reading Activities (comprehending)

1) Creating a Data Chart during reading (Matrix) - Provides students with an organizational structure while reading. Create a data chart handout for the first reading assignment. Go over it during class, describing how it can be used while reading to take notes and construct meaning from one or more texts. These can be organized in many ways - by concepts, by questions, by characteristics, main points, pros/cons, etc. Have students bring them to class and then use them to extend the learning for writing assignments, presentations, or projects. Once students become familiar with how they work, get them to create their own matrices to demonstrate learning.

2) Reciprocal Teaching - getting students to read and think at a deeper level. Model interacting with a text, using 4 questions types: 1) Predicting - What do you think the next section will be about? ; 2) Questioning - I'm still curious about...; 3) Clarifying - Does this mean...?; 4) Summarizing - What do you think the author wants us to learn? Have students work in small groups to de-construct a text using these types of questions. Debrief and evaluate the interactions in terms of learning.

3) Concept Collection - students divide paper into 4 columns: Familiar Concepts, Evidence, New Concepts, Evidence. Before reading, students fill in the first column. As they read, they list evidence to support what they already know. After reading, they identify and list the new concepts they've acquired as a result of the reading. They then go back and fill in the supporting evidence for the new concepts. The class as a whole can create a master list of concepts and double check the evidence provided.

After Reading Activities (using the information)

1) Cubing - gets students to construct meaning about a topic from six different perspectives: Description - What's it like?; Comparison - What's it similar to (or different than); Association - What does it make you think of?; Analysis - How is it made or what's it composed of?; Application - What can you do with it or how can it be used?; Argumentation - Take a stand - argue for or against it.  Students can use this as as springboard to oral or written assignments.

2) Ask The Expert - encourages independent learning by requiring students to become the class experts on different topics. Model how you would go about doing this - collecting information on the topic from a wide collection of sources, brainstorming possible questions or topics for inquiry, consideration of best way to share information - FAQ's, presentations, workbooks, web sites, etc.

Stephens, E.C., & Brown, J. E. (2005). A handbook of content literacy strategies: 125 practical reading and writing ideas .Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

 

Last Thoughts...

Recall that students aren't used to the amount and complexity of reading required in college. That doesn't mean that you lower your standards. It does mean that you need to make your expectations (and consequences) very clear. Scaffold their progress with carefully structured and planned activities that help them grow in sophistication as readers and thinkers. This builds confidence and increases motivation!

 

Remember to give students:

• the purpose for reading - Students in college read to learn and read to improve their intellectual skills. Be explicit, "You are reading this because..." Give them a goal for their reading
• efficient and effective reading strategies - help them to match the strategy to the purpose for reading
• pre/during/post reading activities to get students ready to read, to improve their understanding while reading, and to build higher-order thinking skills by using what they've read in other activities
• strategies to understand and break down difficult texts
• scaffolded direction to develop critical thinking skills (targeted and leveled activities with meaningful feedback that draw students to the next level)
• the questions and stances they need to approach all texts in a critical fashion
• opportunities to connect learning/thinking to social action and civic responsibility when possible

As students gain confidence and skill in their reading abilities, the scaffolding you do will be required less often. Students in beginning courses will most likely need more support than upper class students. However, keep in mind that students in electives may need more support as they seek to transfer skills learned in core courses to other disciplines.

Reading is a topic about which we may make many assumptions often to the detriment of our students. This module was designed to shed some light onto the complexity of reading academic texts and the connection between reading, learning, and thinking in a higher education environment.  I hope the strategies and background information will be useful to you as you build future courses and work to improve current offerings.

Thanks for taking the time to complete this module!

Any questions, comments, or ideas, please send them to me at scs15@psu.edu