by Dana Blair
Intro
While teaching Comp 2, I noticed that a lot of my students were, understandably, having trouble with the readings from the Writing About Writing textbook. These readings are complex, often dense, and are not written for an audience of college freshmen. However, I do think the readings contain a lot of concepts that will really help my students become better writers, and I also want them to learn how to read academic material. I decided that my students needed to learn how to skim and scan for relevant information rather than push through a word-for-word reading of the first page before giving up.
To introduce the concept of skimming and scanning, we did the following (awesome) activity:
Skimming Lessons
Prep Work
- Place 15-20 recognizable objects close together on the desk under the doc cam. (The stuff from your bag and your coat pockets.) Make sure the objects are covered before you turn on the doc cam!
The Activity
- Tell your students that there are several objects on the desk, but that they are covered. Once you remove the cover, you will give them 10 seconds to see the items. No writing things down yet!
- Cover the items up again and allow students a moment to write down any items they can remember.
- Ask the student with the longest list to read their list out while you write it on the board. Ask any other students to help fill in the gaps with items from their own lists.
Discussion
Ask the students some questions at this point. Was that difficult? Why? What strategies did you use during the 10 seconds the items were uncovered? What if you asked the students to give you a general idea of what types of items were on the desk; would that be easier or, in some cases, possibly more useful? (like scanning for concepts rather than every detail of a text.)
- Uncover the items again and examine them together. What items did the students miss entirely? Were some items obscured or less recognizable?
- Find a category that only applied to 4-5 items (blue items, metal items, etc). Would it have been easier if you had told them beforehand to remember only the (metal, blue, round) objects? (Like skimming) What if you didn’t specify what category of objects they should focus on beforehand, but still asked them to identify those items afterwards? (It is more difficult, like identifying your exigence for reading after you read.)
Relating to the Concept
- Begin to explain the concept of skimming and scanning text. Are all texts easy to read? What if your time is limited or the content is unfamiliar? Are there ways to identify a “category” before you read? How can the “framing the reading” section, pre-reading and post-reading questions, and subheadings help you pick out the “blue” items as you read?
The activity acted as a great analogy for the concepts we went over, and gave me a way to easily remind students throughout the semester to skim or scan a text: Just the metal objects! What kinds of things came from my backpack?
Hope this is helpful, and happy teaching!
Dana Blair is a second year M.A. student at the University of Arkansas. She is studying Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy, and loves teaching and learning. When Dana is not grading or writing papers, she is probably watching Psych with her husband and five children.