Many people have trouble with reading.

Reading is hard for some people, and it can

take time. It is a process of the brain where you look at symbols on a page and your
mind sees the patterns of characters and understands the meaning in them. If you
develop strong reading skills, it'll be very helpful to your future. Aren't your school
teachers always saying 'Read more books!'? Here are a few steps and tips to get
started.

Part1
Preparing to read
1.

1
Find something to read. Examples include a children's book, a newspaper article, a
short story, or something on wikiHow.
2.

2
Go to the library and pick up lots of books. Pick books depending on
your readinglevel, no matter what your age. It should be something that you find
interesting. Otherwise, you will not feel like sticking to it. Reading is about enjoying the
experience while learning something.
 You could choose interesting and easy-to-read books such as comic books, or more
complex books like epic novels and non-fiction.
3.

3
Find a place to read where you can concentrate. This may be someplace secret
where no one will bother you, or simply your home at a time when it is quiet.

4. 4
Schedule a time to read. Any time is a good time to read. But if you can set aside
some time everyday, that will help in developing a reading habit.
  Pick up something to read when travelling on the bus or train. This is a good way to
pass time and you can train yourself to read faster and comprehend more despite the
distractions around.

2
Part

Implementing the basics of reading improvement

1.

1
Begin your reading by looking at the pictures in the book and maybe, listen to
some music to set the atmosphere.
2.

2
Start with titles, names, and other introductory sections in the book.Some books
have a section with principal characters listed and some information about
them. Or there could be maps depicting the place described in the book. Be sure to
look at all that.
3.

3
Read the page carefully. If you cannot speed read, then do not push yourself to read
faster. The whole point of reading is to understand what the author is conveying. No
sense in skimming through the content.
 Ask yourself the five Ws- Why, What, Who, When, and Where. This will guide your
reading.

4. 4
Listen to audio books and follow the text at the same time. This can aid good
pronunciation and word recognition.
 Sound out each word as best you can based on what you hear. Remember,
pronunciation of English words could be different depending on what type of English it is
 (American or British) and depending on the context (like heteronyms- project can be
both verb and noun) and you will notice they form some sort of word.

 Pay attention to the stresses in words and sentences.

Part3
Advancing your reading skills
1.

1
Read as much as you are able. When you start getting bored or need a break, take
one. Reading should be fun and enjoyable, don't force it. After your break, return to
where you were, and continue.
2.

2
Reread the material. It is okay to reread something if you do not understand it fully the
first time.
3.

3
Use context clues to find out a word's meaning. Context clues are when a person
figures out the meaning of a word by seeing how the word was used in a sentence. For
example, you were reading the following sentence and wanted to know what 'pessimist'
means:My mother is always happy and optimistic, the total opposite of my brother, the
pessimist. So from the sentence, you can gather that 'pessimist' means the opposite of
happy, so pessimist means being moody and angry. Good, experienced readers always
use context clues! If you find a word that you're totally stumped on, use the dictionary! If
you want to save time and the hassle of turning pages, go to the online dictionary.
4.

4
Memorize a text. Read that portion out in front of a mirror, out loud. Memorizing can
improve your confidence with reading.
5.

5
Reread. If you don't understand what you are reading, read the sentence(s) again. Try
reading the words out loud to yourself. If you still don't understand something, ask a
good reader nearby to explain the sentence(s) to you, or simply pick up a book that is
easier to read and more appropriate to your reading level. Feel free to use your finger
as a pointer. It will keep your eyes focused on the line you are reading, improving your
understanding.
6.

6
Keep reading. Try to read as much as you can in your free time. Reading will help you
in lots of ways; your vocabulary will become larger and more sophisticated and you will
notice your grades change for the better in school. Have fun reading!
 Improving your reading skills
Study guide

For a printer-friendly PDF version of this guide, click here

Improving your reading skills will reduce unnecessary reading time and enable you to read in a more focused

and selective manner. You will also be able to increase your levels of understanding and concentration. This

guide shows you how to read with greater efficiency and effectiveness by using a range of different reading

skills.

Other useful guides: Effective note making, Thought mapping.

Reading for study

You already use a range of reading styles in everyday situations. The normal reading style that you might use

for reading a novel is to read in detail, focusing on every word in sequence from start to finish. If it is a

magazine you are reading, you might flick through the pages to see which articles are of interest. When you

look in a telephone directory for a particular name, you purposefully ignore all other entries and focus your

attention on spotting the name you want. These everyday reading skills can be applied to your studies.

To improve your reading skills you need to:

 have clear reading goals;

 choose the right texts;

 use the right reading style;

 use note taking techniques.

Reading goals
Clear reading goals can significantly increase your reading efficiency. Not everything in print will be of use to

you. Use reading goals to select and prioritise information according to the task in hand.

Reading goals can be:

 an essay or seminar subject;

 a report brief;
 a selected subject area;

 a series of questions about a specific topic.

Use your reading goals to help you identify the information that is relevant to your current task.

Choosing a text
You will need to assess the text to see if it contains information that is relevant to your reading goals.

 Check the date of publication. Is the information up-to-date?

 Read the publisher's blurb at the back or inside sleeve for an overview of the content.

 Check the contents page for relevant chapters.

 Look up references for your topic in the index.

If the text does not seem relevant, discard it.

Once you have selected a text you can use the following techniques of scanning and skimming to help you

identify areas for detailed reading.

Scanning

Scanning is the technique you might use when reading a telephone directory. You pass your vision speedily

over a section of text in order to find particular words or phrases that are relevant to your current task. You can

scan:

 the introduction or preface of a text;

 the first or last paragraphs of chapters;

 the concluding or summarising chapter of a text;

 the book index.

Skimming

Skimming is the process of speedy reading for general meaning. Let your eyes skip over sentences or phrases

which contain detail. Concentrate on identifying the central or main points. Use this technique to:

 pre-view a selection of text prior to detailed reading;

 refresh your understanding of a selection of text following detailed reading.

Detailed reading and note taking

Once you have selected useful information, you can begin to read in detail. Note taking techniques provide a

useful aid to reading. Use:

 underlining and highlighting to pick out what seem to you the most central or important words and phrases.
Do this in your own copy of texts or on photocopies - never on borrowed texts;
 keywords to record the main headings as you read. Use one or two keywords for each main point. Keywords
can be used when you don't want to mark the text;
 questions to encourage you to take an active approach to your reading. Record your questions as you read.
They can also be used as prompts for follow up work;
 summaries to check you have understood what you have read. Pause after a section of text and put what you
have read in your own words. Skim over the text to check the accuracy of your summary, filling in any
significant gaps.

These techniques encourage an active engagement with the text as well as providing you with a useful record

of your reading. Avoid passively reading large amounts of text, it does not make effective use of your time.

Always use a note taking technique to increase your levels of concentration and understanding.

For more detailed guidance on note taking techniques see the guide Effective Note Making.

Increasing your reading speed

It is more important to improve your reading skills than your reading speed. Being focused and selective in your

reading habits will reduce the time you spend reading. If, in addition to using a range of reading skills you want

to increase your reading speed, then the following technique will be of use.

The average reading speed is about 240-300 words per minute. For the average reader, the eye fixes on each

word individually.

It is easy for your eye to recognise 4 or 5 words in a single fixation without a loss of understanding.

The key to increasing your reading speed is not to increase the speed at which your eyes move across the

page, but to increase the word span for a single fixation. A simple way of developing the habit of taking in more

than one word per fixation is to take a page of text and divide it length ways into three with two lines drawn

down the page. Using a pen or pencil as a pointer, read each line of text by allowing your eye to fall only in the

middle of each of the three sections, as indicated by your pointer.

 Developing your reading speed

 Don't worry about how quickly you are reading but instead, concentrate on reading the line in only three
fixations.

 As this becomes more natural, practise without drawing lines.

 Later, reduce the number of fixations to two per line.

 Once this increased word span becomes a comfortable habit, an increase in your reading speed will occur.

Summary
 Have a clear focus for your reading. Set your reading goals.

 Survey the text before you spend the time and effort involved in detailed reading.

 Scan and skim to select the text for detailed reading.

 Scan and skim after detailed reading to reinforce your understanding.

 Use a form of note taking whilst reading in detail, to keep you concentrating, aid understanding and provide you
with a record of your reading.

 Using clear reading goals and a variety of reading skills is more important than increasing your reading speed.

 To improve your reading speed, don't increase the speed of the eye across the page, but increase the number
of words the eye recognises in a single fixation.
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED502607

21st century teaching & learning

Many children now start school technologically literate. They can use a keyboard and are familiar with tablet
technology and smartphones. As educators we have to ask: What effect does this interactivity have on teaching and
learning?

There is no question that technology engages students but what they learn using that technology and how they learn
still depends on the craft and skills of the teacher.

I canvassed issues about technology and pedagogy today at the FutureSchools Expo in Sydney.

Pedagogy in the 21st century has to put the emphasis on the 4Cs – collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and
communication. In our fast-changing world, more of the same knowledge and skills will not address the challenges of
the future.

Our education system must equip young people with the capacity to think, solve problems and respond to and thrive
within a changing society.

Our challenge as educators is to ensure quality pedagogy works within the world of contemporary students and to
keep upskilling our teachers to meet these needs.

With the avalanche of information available online, the teacher is now more the facilitator of learning than the holder
of all knowledge.

The teacher poses the questions, provides the tools and research methods, as well as delivering subject content and
guidance for problem-solving in a collaborative environment. It is an evolution in teaching practice that offers exciting
possibilities.

It's important that we value the knowledge that students acquire outside of school and use those experiences to make
learning relevant.

Our challenge is not just to harness the potential technology can offer to support quality pedagogy, but to use
technology to extend learning opportunities and curriculum breadth for all students.

Technology has allowed us, for example, to establish our first virtual school with Aurora College, which is linking
students in rural and remote NSW to specialist teachers, extending curriculum options and providing new
opportunities for gifted and talented students.

Technology is a wonderful enabler for learning and innovation, but great teachers still need to have high expectations
for every student, a deep understanding of their subject content and a capacity to inspire and motivate students, just
as they have done in previous generations.
I was wrapping up a presentation on memory and learning when a colleague asked,

“How do we help students learn in courses where there’s a lot of memorization?” He

explained that he taught introductory-level human anatomy, and although the course
wasn’t all memorization, it did challenge students’ capacity to retain dozens of new
terms and concepts.
The question itself is tricky because most teaching professionals are heavily invested in
the idea that learning isn’t about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam. We also
worry, and with good reason, that emphasizing rote learning steals time and effort away
from the deeper thinking that we want students to do. But in my work I’ve come to
realize that memorization deserves some airtime because it is one important route to
building content knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, acquiring content knowledge
doesn’t have to detract from critical thinking, reasoning, or innovation—rather, it can
complement all these. Cognitive scientists are making new discoveries all the time about
the connections between memory and processes such as drawing inferences, making
predictions, and other skills that make up the ability to think like an expert in a
discipline.
So what techniques target this specific teaching and learning challenge? We’re all
familiar with mnemonics such as the first-letter technique—using a word such as RICE
(rest, ice, compression, elevation) or a catchy phrase (Every Good Boy Does Fine) to
remember a sequence of information. Mnemonics are one good tool, but what else can
we offer?
Learning isn’t about being able to regurgitate facts on an exam, but memorization deserves some
airtime because it is one important route to building content knowledge and expertise
For starters, we should convey to students (and keep in mind ourselves) that
memorization challenges nearly everyone because the mind simply isn’t set up to take in
reams of disjointed facts. Our memory systems evolved to be picky about what we
remember, selecting the information that is most relevant to our goals and discarding
the rest. Understanding this helps us and our students have realistic expectations about
the level of effort needed to succeed.
It also helps to understand how we create memories for words, because many
memorization tasks involve scientific terms, foreign language vocabulary, and the like.
How we do this has been hotly debated among researchers, but one view is that we rely
on a special piece of mental machinery called the phonological loop that holds speech
sounds.
If you’ve ever muttered a phone number to yourself while you ran around looking for a
pencil to write it down with, you’ve experienced the phonological loop in action. But
recycling phone numbers isn’t the phonological loop’s main reason for existing. Rather,
its real job kicks in when we run into a word we haven’t heard before. When this
happens, the phonological loop grabs onto the sequence of sounds and keeps it fresh
while other memory systems set up representations of what the new word means. The
catch is that phonological loop capacity varies fairly substantially from individual to
individual. This means that words of three, four, or more syllables overwhelm some
people’s ability to learn new words on the fly.
With these two points in mind—that memory doesn’t handle disjointed facts well and
new vocabulary hinges on one sometimes-shaky mechanism within memory—here are
some ways to help students manage memorization:

 Emphasize context and purpose. Ask yourself why students are being asked
to memorize these facts in the first place. If students can readily answer that
question and if they can picture future situations in which they will use the
information, they will be better primed to remember it.
 Break down new vocabulary words, especially those that are more than two
syllables long. Allow time to rehearse and remember the first couple of syllables
before tacking on later ones. Also keep in mind that this process will be easier for
some students than others due to wide variation in phonological loop capacity;
you may want to design in a “mastery learning” or other individualized approach
for vocabulary so that students can move through at their own pace.
 Visualize information. For most people, imagery is highly memorable,
perhaps because so much of the brain is devoted to visual processing. Memory
champions, such as the ones populating the best seller Moonwalking with
Einstein, use elaborate visualization strategies to achieve incredible feats of
memorization. Similarly, strategies such as the keyword mnemonic work by
linking word sounds to images (such as using an image of a cowboy on a horse to
remember the Spanish word “caballo,” which sounds a bit like “cowboy”).
 Take advantage of the “Big Three” applied memory principles—
testing, spacing, and interleaving. Briefly, these refer to the facts that
quizzes are a great way to study and that we do best when we spread out our
study sessions and alternate between different topics. Tackling a big memory
project such as human anatomy means we need every advantage we can get, and
dozens of research studies have supported these three as producing the biggest
memory payoff for the time invested.
 Avoid the rereading trap. Students tend to fall into passively reviewing
material, and in doing so they miss the key advantage of techniques such as
testing: retrieval practice. Retrieval practice strengthens memory, but it works
only when we actively challenge memory. Flash cards, a favorite student strategy,
are fine as long as students use them to actively quiz themselves.
It’s okay to expect students to learn the facts and terms needed to become experts in a
discipline. With an understanding of memory and some strategies to share, we can make
this side of learning productive and maybe even painless—but certainly at least less
painful.
 8 Ways to Boost Memorization Skills
December 23, 2013 by Sally Sigan

Rainer Plendl/Shutterstock
Funny, the things that get stuck in your head. I have trouble remembering my
bank password, but somehow my brain has managed to retain the books of the
bible—in order–chiefly due to a catchy song I learned in bible school when I
was eight. It often seems as if I’ve forgotten so much more than I ever learned,
but scientists would assure me that my brain is continually at work, categorizing
new information, calling up old files and making connections between the old
and new memories.

Scientists are still learning about the brain and how memory works, but there
are some pretty substantial insights that are essential for teachers to know. As
teachers, we may not necessarily see our task as getting our students to
memorize information; however, the truth is that there is a fine line between
learning and memorizing. To our brains, the difference may seem minimal.

As humans, we have two types of memory, short-term or ‘working’ memory,

and long-term, or ‘stored’ memory. Our brain is a pattern-seeking entity that
encodes information, much the same way that an online search engine lifts
words or phrases from your search history and then links you to related
advertisements. Each time a connection is made, the path from one idea to the
next is made clearer and the thought process improves. This is why practicing
the piano makes a good pianist. The firing between the synapses speeds up and
works better and better each time we use it. So as teachers, there are two
incentives for encouraging our students to memorize. First, they will move what
they’ve learned from their short term memory into their long-term memory for
use later on, and second, because the process itself will improve their ability to
think and learn. Memorizing is good for our brains. The cliché “use it or lose it”
applies here! Here are 8 ways to boost memorization skills for your students.

1) Activate prior knowledge. This age-old teaching method is a

way to ‘prime the pump,’ so to speak. When you open a lesson with ‘what do
you know’ or ‘has anyone ever’ questions, you are revving up the synapses in
your student’s brains, which then prepares them to better store memory.
2) Provide information of interest and meaning to the
students. This may fall under the “obvious” category, but studies show that
the more interested we are in something, the more likely we’re able to
remember it.
3) Use visuals! This is the brilliance behind graphic organizers. The
majority of our students are visual learners and this means that visuals greatly
aide most students in studying and memorizing.
4) Write it over and over again. Happily we don’t use this
torture too often, and we don’t have one of Professor Umbridge’s pens, but this
is the logic behind writing spelling words 10 times, and the reason we took
notes in college. Writing it down helps provide the magic three; information
that is received editorially, then written, and finally read, has more of a chance
of making it to long-term memory.
5) Concentration—One thing at a time! Students who are distracted or
multitasking are unlikely to remember the lesson.
6) Summarize— Whether it’s something they’ve read or just heard,
asking student to summarize information in their own words helps them encode
and remember.
7) Have them teach—think back to subjects you gave a presentation
on or had to teach. Chances are, you remember quite a bit of the content. The
process of organizing information and presenting to another person fires many
synapses!
8) Memory tricks such as songs, acronyms, mnemonics, raps and
rhymes all help students categorize and especially trigger information for
recall. HOMES are great way to recall the great lakes. “Please Excuse My
Dear Aunt Sally” helps students to navigate math procedures (Parentheses,
Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction) and the ABC song
is the first classic stepping stone into learning the alphabet.
Clearly, not every brain works the same. Part of our goal is to help our students
learn the best strategies for getting their particular brains to store information in
their long-term memories.