An Active Reading skills worksheet is an excellent way to teach your students to read. Active reading involves watching and listening, learning and reciting, all in the same moment. The benefits of active reading are many. By using a skills worksheet with an active vocabulary and active comprehension, you will be teaching students to read in the way that adults read.
Active reading is all about taking notes while reading. The idea is to use your memory, but not to rely on it for all of your reading. Instead, you read while making notes of important points and statements. This helps you understand the passage much more fully. Active reading techniques are especially useful for students who don’t have a good command of English grammar.
Although note taking is an important part of the learning process, it is not the end-all, be-all of reading comprehension. You need to allow your students the opportunity to hear, read, and speak the words you use to read the passage. Active reading is just as much about listening as it is about writing. Active listening will help you understand what is being said and give your students an opportunity to take notes on their own, which makes active reading easier and more productive.
Vocabulary will be the most important aspect of any active reading skills worksheet. Many textbooks and educational media have vocabulary lists that teachers use to help their students master a particular word or phrase. Your skills worksheet can serve a variety of purposes, but the most important is to enable your students to learn the words of your text and have fun doing it. The best lessons begin with some sort of active reading.
There are two ways to go about teaching students to write coherently. The first is to rely on rote memorization and a sense of order. The second is to rely on a live, spontaneous conversation. The primary difference between the two, however, is the emphasis on incorporating the other into the learning process.
One way to use active reading is to use your own words in your text and watch students’ reactions. You can then ask them to make notes. When you are not in front of your students, you can use passive reading techniques such as reading what someone else has written and use your own sentences to explain or summarize. Your students will soon develop a strong sense of how active reading will be.
The third way to use active reading is when you are writing the text but need to supplement that with other activities. You can even write the text to fit around a particular activity such as cooking or going on a trip. You can set the activity up in advance, making sure to check with your students about what they are trying to do. You can also use a skills worksheet to show them which activities are acceptable and which ones are not.
Active reading skills worksheets are a great way to teach students to read and to retain information much better than standard rote memorization through a sense of order. You can include a wide variety of activities to encourage active reading. Then you can continue to do this throughout the semester and all of your students will be able to read well.
