Building Academic Reading Skills: New Campus Approaches

This semester there are several exciting projects happening on campus to build college-level reading skills. LL ED 005 is the college reading course that I teach each semester which typically has students with lower SAT reading scores or international students who want to improve their language skills enrolled in it. Details about the lessons are in red.

Over time however, it has become increasingly apparent that many students (not just those with lower SAT sores) struggle with reading tasks at the college level and so several projects were completed in the Fall 17 and Spring 18 semesters to address these issues. I created several embedded lessons using textbooks and scholarly articles being studied in the various courses to teach reading and study strategies to the students. Below is a list of the courses and faculty in which this approach has been used along with details about the process.

Reading scholarly research (basics & critical approaches)

  1. HDFS 312 – Empirical Inquiry in Human Development with Dr. Amber Seidel – FA 17, SP18
  2. HDFS 455 – Development and Administration of Human Services Programs – Dr. Amber Seidel – SP 2018
  3. PSYCH 301 – Basic Research Methods in Psychology – Dr. Nicole Muscanell – SP 18

In general, the process begins with a survey and brief discussion asking students how they approached the reading before this instruction session.

The lesson involves having students notice key elements of structure – at a macro and micro level – to build comprehension. For example, noticing the main sections such as abstract, headings and subheadings, introduction and background, methods, results, and discussion seems like it might be obvious, but this isn’t something that can be taken for granted.

This serves a second important  function – the more difficult the research article becomes, the more important it is to build up comprehension over multiple exposures to the same key ideas, and you can accomplish that by helping students to see the structure that is built into every article.

To help build comprehension at the MICRO level, we developed activities for the Introduction/Background, Measures/Results, and Discussion/Conclusion sections. Each activity helped students to identify common structural elements in the section along with sample language that acts as a signpost for important information.  These activities were modified across multiple disciplinary courses, including an application activity for a 400-level course.

The lesson stresses the importance of using these template/frames/tools for every article during the semester until reading and noticing the key structural elements becomes automatic.

Reading a college textbook for learning

  1. HDFS 129 – Introduction to Human Development and Family Studies – Dr. Sonia Molloy – FA17, SP18
  2. PSYCH 100 – Introductory Psychology – Dr. Nicole Muscanell – FA17

These sessions have been very well received by faculty and students who report that the strategies presented are very useful. It has been a really nice way to share my area of study with the campus!

These lessons give students tips for actively reading (reading for learning) their textbooks. Readiness for reading, memory, note taking, retention, and retrieval practice are covered. Practical strategies are highlighted.

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