Nonfiction: Analyze Reading Strategies

Reading Nonfiction

 

Citation: Last name, First name. Title. City: Publisher, date.

Summary from online catalogue or verso:

Subject headings from online catalogue or verso:

 

BEFORE READING THE BOOK:

  1. Check reliability.
    1. What are the author’s credentials?
    2. What are the publisher’s credentials?
    3. What is the copyright date and does it affect the reliability of the book?
  2. Access your background knowledge.
    1. Read the back cover and the dustcover of the book.
    2. Read the verso of the title page.
    3. What have you experienced in life that relates to this book?
    4. What have you read in books that relates to this book?
  3. Make predictions.
    1. What do you think you will learn in this book?
    2. How will this book help you better understand the world?
    3. How will this book help you better understand how to be a good human being?

READ THE BOOK

  1. Look at the vocabulary.
    1. What words are new to you?
    2. What words can you figure out by their their context? Give your definitions of these words.
    3. What words do you still not understand?
  2. Look at any illustrations and captions.
    1. What information can you learn from them?
    2. Are the illustrations essential to understanding the main idea or do they provide extra details or are they only for the sake of beauty?
  3. Look for the main ideas and details.
    1. For each chapter, take notes.
    2. Write down the main ideas.
    3. Give the evidence that supports those ideas.
  4. Decide what is most important.
    1. What is the most important idea in this book?
    2. What is the evidence for that idea?
    3. Why is that idea so important?
  5. Assess your strategies.
    1. On what pages did you slow down so you could better understand the writing?
    2. On what pages did you skim because you thought the information was not important?
    3. On what pages did you reread the information to help you understand?
    4. On what pages did you go back and hunt for facts that you wanted to write down?

 AFTER YOU READ

  1. Make connections.
    1. What have you experienced in life that relates to the information and ideas in this book?
    2. What have you heard about in life that relates to this book?
    3. What novels or nonfiction books have you read that relate to this book?
  2. Assess the value.
    1. What do you know about the world that you did not know before you read this book?
    2. What do you understand about life that you did not appreciate before you read this book?
  3. Mentally recite to remember.
    1. What do you think you should add to your general knowledge now that you have read the book?
    2. Create and memorize a 1-minute speech about what you have learned (ideas and evidence).
    3. Perform your speech for your teacher and classmates.
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