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Reading

Reading is the process of decoding symbols to derive meaning. Learning to read starts well before children see letters and words. Learning how to read starts with the first spoken words a baby hears. Hearing a language begins developing one’s language acquisition skills, the foundation for learning how to read.

Listening and speaking a language as a young child builds phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate the smallest units of sounds (phonemes) in words of a given language. The better a child learns to understand and speak a language, the easier it is to learn to read.

Reading requires the orchestration of many parts of the brain to handle and coordinate the range of processes:

Handle phonological awareness and decoding/discriminating sounds.
Detect and recognize the letters and connect them as words.
Process and integrate speech production, reading fluency, grammatical usage, and comprehension.

Dyslexia

Dyslexia is the difficulty in learning to read, reading quickly and automatically, and retrieving spoken words easily. Dyslexia is a reading disability that is not related to intelligence or motivation. The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity has compiled tips from dyslexic students about their reading and studying strategies: Tips from Students.

Clues within the Organization of a Field of Words

Because you can see many letters as words on a page, the structure of the written material creates a variety of visual clues on how to interpret the information:

Structure of Words (morphology)
Construction of a Sentence (organizes types of words)
Punctuation (symbols that help the reader understand the writer’s intended message)
Structure of a Paragraph
Structure of an Essay (sequence of related paragraphs)
Structure of a Poem
Structure of a Scientific Article
Construction of an Informational Book (many related essays)

If you own the printed material, you may add visual “cues” to what is important to you so you may find it again quickly (highlighter, notes, and symbols in the margins, bookmarks, dog-ear the pages, etc.).

Ways of Interacting with Text

When you view a page of words, your eyes may go anywhere at any time. You may read from the top line, left to right, and progress to the bottom of the page, but you don’t need to. There are three ways to view the words on a page or screen:

Skimming to see what’s there and if it looks interesting. You are gathering cursory information.
Scanning to find specific information quickly. You are in hunt mode to find your answer and move on.
Reading to understand as completely as possible what the author intended to communicate.

In any of these types of viewing, you don’t even need to move steadily forward through the text. As you are processing the information, you may realize you have a question and need to reread previous sentences, or that you zoned out and need to reread the current sentence or paragraph.

There are two common ways people use the Internet to interact with information: perusal to see what is exciting and to find an answer to a question as quickly as possible. The first fosters skimming webpages, and the second uses scanning predominantly, with reading as a limited amount of text once identified. The more we use the Internet as our primary source of text, the harder it becomes to read for comprehension or recognize the subtext. “Slow” reading books requires more prolonged periods of focus, which requires practice to maintain the skill.

Text vs. Video and Recording

Videos and recordings present vast amounts of information in a sequential flow of time; whereas, time is not a variable when viewing written material (well, maybe for a murder mystery!). In a sense, the text is timeless – you may explore information at the pace you like and in the order that meets your needs.

Reading for the Big Ideas

Not every phrase carries equal importance—identifying big ideas while reading helps you organize and possibly recreate the supporting, less critical details. There is less to memorize while you also develop tools to fit information together. Big ideas are the set of concepts encapsulating what you are reading.

As you read for learning, identify the level of importance of the content:

Is it a critical idea that organizes all the other information you are processing?
Is it an important concept?
Should you be familiar with it?
Or is it a detail that hides the bigger picture?

Prioritizing information takes time since you are analyzing throughout the reading. To do this well, give yourself time to take your time.

The Importance of Details

Sabrina Sadique, poet and English teacher, and John Pickle (now Jodi) discuss why details are essential in reading, writing, and observing. One must become comfortable going from the big picture to details and details to the big picture to understand what you are engaged with thoroughly.

Apologies for the Zoom delays in the video due to WiFi issues, but the message still comes through, just with some out-of-sync soundtrack in the video at times.

Examples of Big Ideas in Science and Math

Big ideas help us connect what often feel like disconnected facts. Ultimately, a big idea interconnects your knowledge to create a variety of stories that you may apply in ever-changing scenarios. But what do they look like?

The Northwest Central Earth Systems Science teacher-friendly guide has identified five big ideas:

The Earth is a system of systems.
The flow of energy drives the cycling of matter.
Life, including human life, influences and is influenced by the environment.
Physical and chemical principles are unchanging and drive both gradual and rapid changes in the Earth system.
Understanding (deep) time and the scale of space, models and maps are necessary.

But Earth Sky identifies nine big ideas in Earth Science:

Earth scientists use repeatable observations and testable ideas to understand and explain our planet.
Earth is 4.6 billion years old.
Earth is a complex system of interacting rock, water, air, and life.
Earth is continuously changing.
Earth is the water planet.
Life evolves on a dynamic Earth and continuously modifies Earth.
Humans depend on Earth for resources.
Natural hazards pose risks to humans.
Humans significantly alter the Earth.

One’s big ideas from a reading won’t be identical to someone else’s, but the key is that they help you put the facts you’ve read about into a big picture perspective.

Below are two activities to develop your ability to identify the big ideas as you read. Identifying big ideas helps you make stories that organize the details effectively and help you take more useful notes (see the next section on Writing).

Activity 1: TERC and the American Geological Institute created the Earth Science by Design Handbook for Professional Developers that contains many valuable activities, but one helps explore how to read for big ideas, or what they have defined as “worthy of deep understanding.” They have identified four categories of information (see page 82 in their pdf document):

Worthy of Deep Understanding
Important to Know and Do
Worth Being Familiar With
Other Content

They provide a list of statements from Earth Science (pages 79-81), which must be categorized based on their importance. Work in small groups or individually. You may cut the individual statements into separate strips of paper, or you can print out sheets for each person. Categorize each phrase (either put the strips in separate piles based on their category or label them with a colored pencil or pen). If working in teams, share your thoughts on how the statement should be categorized.

When done, count the number of statements in each category. If several groups are working on this activity, write the numbers on the board to compare results. There should be fewer Worthy of Deep Understanding statements, with increasing numbers for categories more removed from this “big picture” category.

Lastly, compare your rankings with those shared in the Handbook (pages 77-78).

Another way to run this activity is to work alone to categorize the statements, then work in small teams to discuss and recategorize, and finally compare each team’s numbers to the entire class/large group.

** Sadly, we learned in the spring of 2022 that this website is no longer available, but we are keeping the activity posted since you may recreate it with a document that summarizes the big ideas in a topic. **

Activity 2: In a team, select a topic of mutual interest, and find an article that covers the subject well. Consider using the sample research paper, An Introduction to the Origin of Life. Read it to identify the big ideas, then compare the results. Discuss the differences in your lists of big ideas and how you came to your conclusions. Finally, work together to create one unified list of big ideas. Compare this to your original list to consider how you might change how you read for big ideas.

Reading Science

Let’s face it; science papers are dense with facts and details that often mask the article’s story. This article provides useful strategies for reading and understanding science in journals.

Many webpages on Science Pickle focus on science, but they aren’t as dense as a scientific journal article (hopefully!). But there are links throughout the sight to these types of reading if you want to dive deeper into concepts, ideas, and supporting data.