RM Winter 2017 FINAL

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Reading Matters
Technology Matters
Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 | |65|
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.
Teaching students to be discriminative, critical readers
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
From Children’s Books to Google Hits: Honing
Reading Skills Using Informational Texts
Leslie A. Salley, Rachael L. Ross, & Koti L. Hubbard , Clemson University