Workshop Activities – Reading Strategies
Before reading: read the title, headings, and the first sentence of each paragraph. Examine
the captions under any photos or graphic displays of information. Think about what you
might already know in terms of your purpose for reading, the writer’s purpose, the genre,
and the intended audience.
If a text is unfamiliar, you can find background information to assist your reading in the
editorial comments, prefaces, author notes, and blurbs on book jackets. You might also seek
assistance from peers, teachers and librarians. Remember that boredom is often a common
response when confronting material that is new and challenging --- stick with it!
During reading: underline the writer’s key points to help you identify and keep track of
main ideas and important information and write notes in the margin (annotations) to help
you actively engage in what you are reading. Consider whether you agree or disagree with
what the writer is saying. Raise questions about something that needs to be clarified and
draw connections to other things you have read or know about.
After Reading: review your underlinings and annotations and identify the writer’s
purpose and main point and express these in your own words. Use this as the foundation
for a summary of the reading that includes most important supporting details. You might
also consider doing an exploratory writing where you explore your thoughts and feelings
about the ideas you’ve just read. You might also discuss your assessment of the piece and
how you might use it to support any related writing assignments on which you might be
working.
Freewrite / Discussion Topics



When you are about to read a text, what do you do before you actually begin to
read? Consider different genres encountered in your daily life (e.g. textbook
chapters, academic journal articles, newspapers, magazines, novels, Web sources,
and so on). Does your approach to reading vary by genre?
While you are reading a text (consider the same range of options as in the previous
question), what strategies do you use? How does your approach differ depending on
the type of text being considered?
After reading a text, what do you do to ensure your comprehension of the text, to
assess what you have read critically, or to connect your reading to other activities
(e.g. writing, speaking, research, or other practical applications)?
Activities:



Have students freewrite on any of the topics listed above and engage in an all-group
discussion, making sure to hit on key information and transition discussion into all
three phases of reading.
Before your session, ask the instructor to provide you with a reading selection –
something that the students have not yet read, but can bring with them to class that
day. You’ll want to go this direction if your workshop is not in a “smart” room. Ask
the students to brainstorm (collectively or in small groups) the pre-reading
strategies that they use when approaching an assigned reading. Ask them whether
these strategies might be different from those they might use for other texts
(newspapers, novels, poems, Web content, etc.) Then have the students read the text
independently and ask them to take note of their “during reading” strategies
(underlining, annotating, etc.), which they can then share collectively or in small
groups. Finally, can write a summary of what they have read and then freewrite
and/or discuss other strategies that can be used to improve reading comprehension
and retention.
Alternatively, if your room is technology-enabled, you might select a disciplinespecific reading from Jolliffe’s Academic Writing or Rosen and Behren’s Reading and
Writing Across the Curriculum, both of which are available from the Writing
Programs Office. Be sure to have prepared the reading in advance so that it can be
projected to the class – either posted to a Web link or saved to a USB drive, for
example. You can use this for the exercise above or to practice skimming techniques.
Give students enough time to peruse the material (2 to 3 minutes to read the intro,
topic sentences and conclusion) and ask them to give a general idea of what the
article is about and to predict what the rest of the article might explore. Then have
them then read the article completely make note of the accuracy of their predictions.
Engage in an all-group discussion about when it’s a good idea to skim and when you
need to read more thoroughly. Just remember, that if they students don’t have their
own hard copies, you’ll want to encourage them to take notes rather than underline
and annotate. Finally, you might want to have them take turns reading paragraphs
to encourage active participation.
Works Consulted
Hedgcock, John, and Dana Ferris. Teaching Readers of English: Students, Texts, and Contexts.
New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Trimbur, John. Call to Write. New York: Longman, 2007. Print.