Work through a reading in pieces, first setting some expectations/predictions about the piece and revising as you go.
Steps
- Distribute information about a reading (title, first few sentences).
- Have the class (perhaps in groups) predict what the source material is about. Groups could discuss their ideas and then report back to the whole class. Or you can complete this entire activity in groups.
- Hand out the reading and have students begin reading it (just the first few paragraphs) and revise their predictions.
- Repeat this process as you work through the entire piece together.
- As you go, discuss how expectations/predictions are changing and what is causing this. Discuss how we revise our thinking as we go deeper into a reading.
Follow-Up Assignment Ideas
- Consider breaking the class into groups and having some groups use this activity to guide their reading while another is just told to read and discuss the piece. Have all the students come back to share their impressions and what the piece is about/what they learned from it. Talk afterwards about how their reading approaches impacted their comprehension. If time allows, switch the groups and give everyone a chance to try reading with this method.
Considerations
- Choose a piece where you think students will have to grapple a bit with what the reading is about and might encounter unexpected ideas/shifts. The goal is to prepare students to read more challenging pieces where the main idea or overall conclusions may take some work to discern.
- Talk openly about why some readings are like this. Why are our expectations correct/incorrect? What can we learn about how to approach challenging reading from this experience?