RM Winter 2017

From Children’s Books to Google Hits: Honing Reading Skills Using Informational Texts

Leslie A. Salley, Rachael L. Ross, & Koti L. Hubbard , Clemson University

differs from the skills they learned in early grades because the technologies have changed such that students are often learning via screen instead of page (Gee 2007; Kress 2005; Miner & Pascopella, 2007). The amount of information available and topics we read may have changed significantly, but a return to some of the skills educators still teach in elementary school could help all students become more digitally literate. Perhaps, the critical literacy skills high school students should employ mirror those skills taught in primary grades through the use of informational books. What follows, then, is a comparison of primary-grade reading skills to the higher-level critical reading and researching skills more-advanced students need, specific descriptions of how they mirror one another, as well as grade-level examples of texts and sites teachers can employ to facilitate the skills. Skimming’s Not a Scam! Skimming and scanning have become second nature to anyone who regularly uses a search engine. Starting as early as kindergarten, students begin to skim and scan texts. Students begin by using illustrations to help them find information they need. When reading an informational text about the farm, students may use visual cues from images to search for pages that help them answer the questions about what animals can be found on the farm. As they begin to learn to read independently, students are required to skim and scan texts using key words and text features. Teachers assume that older students know not only how to employ these skills, but also when to do so. Skim a chapter from a chemistry text. Scan for important words in a test question to understand what exactly is being asked. The skills needed for skimming and scanning are often used online as well. When doing a web or database search for a specific term or group of terms, students must be able to quickly discern whether or not a hit or source will be useful. When millions of hits are returned from a search, students need to know that the first items may be those that paid for top billing, and they should read with a critical eye. Too often we click the first website a search engine delivers, when we should consider its creditability and relevance. Since web searches and websites present so much information, students have to learn how to scan a website to find the information they need. Often, as in the primary grades, students will use visual cues to select which areas of a page to read. We employ skimming and scanning almost automatically, but in order to effectively skim or scan, readers need to have a plan. When given 47 million hits about Whitney Houston, it is not practical to read every page, so readers need to figure out strategies to search for more specific information. Readers can focus their searches by looking for key text features or web page orientation and developing content and search

ABSTRACT—With the increasing amount of time that adults spend reading informational materials, it is no wonder that national and state-level standards require K-12 educators to spend more classroom time teaching and talking about informational texts. One method to employ for elementary and secondary grades alike is to focus on activating prior knowledge of skimming and scanning to help students identify textual features and develop a strong research vocabulary. Harnessing these already developed abilities will encourage students to effectively utilize close reading and research skills. What follows, then, is a description of how to bridge reading skills developed in early grades to the skills secondary students should use to read digital texts. Also included is a table of practical examples of each skill for early and secondary grades. While adult reading material comprises 85-95% of informational material (Smith, 2000), primary students spend an estimated 3.6 minutes each day reading nonfiction text (Duke, 2000; Goodwin & Miller, 2012). Narrowing this gap has been a goal of educators on a national and state level for some time (Goodwin & Miller, 2012; Young, Moss, & Cronwell, 2007). Both the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers/NGACBPC/ CCSSO, 2010) and South Carolina College and Career Ready Standards (South Carolina Department of Education, 2015) highlight the need to incorporate more nonfiction texts into curriculum. In addition to reading nonfiction texts, the 21st– century student and worker need to be prepared to read texts in a variety of formats and modalities (Kress, 2005;Rueda, 2013). To further complicate the matter, K-12 educators are not only helping students become digitally literate, but they themselves are also learning how to read and synthesize information across multiple formats from overwhelming numbers of sources (Gee, 2007; Miners & Pascopella, 2007). Sifting through millions of hits provided by Google is expected—so much so that we often do not think about how many results are handed to us when we type in Whitney Houston (47,100,000) or Houston, Texas (115,000,000). Obviously, reading the millions of items Google delivers is not feasable, but which site is the best to start with? Can we be sure we are reading enough information to make informed, educated decisions about which guitar to buy or whether or not we should get the flu vaccine this year? We teach fundamental skills in primary grades that students internalize, such as finding the main idea and determining evidence; high school teachers should work to activate the prior knowledge that students honed as they read picture books, informational texts, and participated in read alouds toward the task of evaluating search engine results.

Reading Matters Technology Matters

Teaching students to be discriminative, critical readers

Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 | scira.org | 65 |

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