To help you on the osslt and in life Reading Strategies To help you on the osslt and in life

Close Reading Annotate your thinking as you read by asking questions, making connections, recording observations and summarizing important information

SUMMARIZING: Qualities of an Excellent Summary Summarizing is a powerful reading strategy. It increases comprehension and retention of information. When you summarize, you restate the most important information of a text, using your own words. Summaries should be between 10 to 25 percent of the original text’s length (1 percent for novels).

Let’s Practice: Summarize the following People used to play football bareheaded. After many injuries, players began to use plain, leather caps. Plastic helmets and masks appeared later. Still, many players were getting hurt. To make helmets better, designers studied --- woodpeckers! Their tough, spongy skulls became the model for modern football helmets.

Here’s What a Summary could look like: During football’s early days, many injuries occurred due to little or no head protection. Improved football helmets were designed using woodpecker skulls as a model.

Helpful Hints: Text features such as titles, subtitles, bold, color, margin notes, etc. are clues to a text’s most important information -- information you may want to include in your summary. When reading a short text, identify the topic sentence in each paragraph. A topic sentence holds the most important information in a paragraph. Therefore, a summary can be written simply by paraphrasing the topic sentences into your own words Identify the answer to the 5 w’s and how. Take your answers, write them into paragraph form and you have the framework for your summary.

Visualizing Using the descriptive details in the text to create an image in your mind as you read This is a helpful way to remember important detail

Making Connections Text to Text Text to Self Text to World (current events, media, history) Making connections helps a reader to draw connections and make inferences based on knowledge that he/she already has

Inferencing Based on the mother’s face, what do you infer she feels? Making an inference is when you draw a conclusion based on evidence or clues in the text and your own prior knowledge about how the world works When you make an inference, your conclusion is NOT explicitly stated nor can it be directly observed. Your inference, however, is almost like an “educated guess” which is most likely correct given the evidence. Based on the mother’s face, what do you infer she feels?

Inferencing Infer: What is the result of the Wife’s diet?

Inference in everyday life You make inferences every day when you respond to people based on their posture, body language, tone of voice, words, and actions. Examples: How do you “know” when… Your teacher is upset with you? Your parents are proud of you? Someone “likes” you? Your friend is joking around when they insult you?

Inferring from advertising What is this advertisement saying about the Range Rover?

What product do you think is being sold here? What “clues” did you use to reach your conclusion

What movie is being parodied? How is this an advertisement for a theatre?

The humour in this ad relies on inference. What can we infer about “beauty pageant contestants in general? What can we infer from the body language of the back two girls? Caption reads: For those who are really competitive. The humour in this ad relies on inference. What can we infer about “beauty pageant contestants in general? What can we infer from the body language of the back two girls?

This ad also relies on inference… What can we infer about Dove’s motives behind this ad? What can we infer about people’s natural perceptions about these women?

Making inferences from texts When reading a text, sometimes you have to infer what characters mean, what’s really going on, how something is symbolic, etc. Example, if a character said the words, “Get out!”, what possible inferences could we make? Much inference depends on context…

Making inferences without context Read the following passage: The young woman walked a bit hesitantly towards the famous cozy Italian restaurant. She did not believe the excuse her parents gave her for having to meet her at the restaurant instead of at their house. To make matters worse, she was a bit grumpy because she was still catching up on the sleep that she lost during exam time. She noticed some cars that looked familiar in the parking lot. As soon as she walked through the door, she heard, …

The text says: She did not believe the excuse her parents gave her The text says: She did not believe the excuse her parents gave her. I know: The text says: She was a bit grumpy because she was still catching up on the sleep that she lost during exam time. I know: The text says: She noticed some cars that looked familiar in the parking lot. As soon as she walked through the door, she heard, … I know: