Critical Reading Skills Time4Learning actUs.htm

What is Reading Comprehension? Reading comprehension skills separates the "passive" unskilled reader from the "active" readers. Skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. Inner Monologue

Benefits of Good Reading Comprehension Reading comprehension skills increase the pleasure and effectiveness of reading. Strong reading comprehension skills help in all the other subjects and in the personal and professional lives. All the tests you take in elementary, middle, and high school are geared towards determining if you are at your reading grade level and/or college ready.

Congress decides to mandate good reading skills Congress charged the National Reading Panel (NRP) with researching “the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read.“ They wanted to find out what methods work best for reading improvement

Important areas Five critical reading skills were found to be very important for improvement:  Phonemic awareness  Phonics  Fluency  Vocabulary  Comprehension (Appendix C, MINORITY VIEW by Joanne Yatvin, Ph.D.. Oregon Trail School District, Sandy, Oregon)

Tactics that work We are using the following strategies that work for reading comprehension:.Mind Mapping. Direct instruction. Use of decodable texts. Embedded skills instruction. Integrated reading and writing. Access to quality literature. Whole-class instruction. Teacher modeling

Speed Reading Develop "traditional" old fashioned speed reading habits first Once thoroughly ingrained it will allow the student to input and scan information quickly Reading becomes habitualized at mostly an unconscious level. In this version of speed reading, rather than the incoming flow of information being the focus of attention, active cognitive processes that organize information dominate. See references to “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell

How to make Speed Reading Actually Work The conscious focus of the brain is oriented towards preparing a speech on the topic being perused rather than trying to hope that text flying by like the spray from a fire hose will make sense It first requires the "student" to learn how to speed read the "old fashioned way" at extremely high speeds. Once this is "achieved", the speed reader has to completely re-learn how to speed read again from scratch.

Mind Mapping Basically going through information in order to find the major concepts A student can create a visual Mind Map or a Linear Mind Map Really helps for studying for tests in general

Chunking Reading Basically highlighting chunked portions of the reading in order to read faster Students practice reading the highlighted areas faster and faster until they reach the desired speed and comprehension levels

Vocabulary Vocabulary is important to not only reading, but writing. Studying and utilizing vocabulary helps reading comprehension It is also very important for the verbal SAT

References Time4Learning, Wiki Books, Rocket Reader, OSPI,

Exercise Time! New Vocabulary DICT, DIT, SPEC/SPIC, TEND, SEN, NOM/NOUN/NOWN/NAM Mind Mapping EX

Exercise for your eyes ***See Sheets