Strategies to Increase Engagement While Reading

Engaged Reading for Learning in Higher Education Series: Topic Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Engaged Reading for Learning in Higher Education Series
Part 3:
Strategies to Increase Engagement While Reading

Overview

It is while reading that students engage with the text directly. Research shows that good readers are active readers. Duke & Pearson (2002) note that proficient readers establish goals for reading; they monitor and evaluate their own reading processes in an ongoing manner to assess the extent to which their reading process helps them to achieve their goals; they vary their reading process according to their purpose; they predict content before they read it; and they “construct, revise and question the meanings they make as they read” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 205.) According to Bean (2011), argument structure, rhetoric, status of background knowledge, and language may all provide challenges to students as they make their way through a text. 

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Teaching Strategies

Instructors might consider the following suggestions to support students during the While Reading stage. These challenges and suggestions are adapted from Bean (2011). 

ChallengesTeaching Suggestions 
May feel reading is optional 

In-class reading with discussion. Have students occasionally read a short passage or section from an article while in class and have a small group/pair discussion of the reading afterward. This will signal to students that you value reading and expect them to engage fully with required course texts. 

Provide structured handouts. Providing worksheets or templates that students fill out while reading and then submit for a binary grade (e.g., “Completed” or “Not Completed”) can motivate students to do the readings without requiring the instructor to do large amounts of grading.  

Incorporate reading into the classroom using Jigsaw Reading with Peer Instruction. In Jigsaw Reading with Peer Instruction, students read portions of an article (or different articles) and complete questions or a reading guide about the article’s content (jigsaw reading). They then come to class and share what they read with a partner or small group composed of people who have all read different texts (peer instruction). This gives students the opportunity to articulate what they have read in their own words in a meaningful way by teaching it to their peers. (See 

“Additional References” for more detailed information.) 

May encounter difficulties 

with the relationships between concepts presented in the readings 

Provide graphic organizers. Provide students with graphic organizers (e.g., a Venn Diagram or  Process Flow diagram) that correspond to the conceptual structures in the readings for students to fill out and turn in. Once students have grown accustomed to the graphic organizer as a reading strategy, they can be asked to create their own graphic organizers to represent the article’s content. (See “Additional 

References” for more detailed information.) 

May need help with reconstructing arguments while reading 

Encourage students to paraphrase or summarize in the margins of texts. Ask students to write single statements in margins, summarizing main points as reading progresses.

Assign a “What it Says/What it Does” task.  Bean (2011) recommends that instructors have students read a text, writing “what it says” and “what it does” statements for each paragraph in a two column table. 

“What it says” statements summarize the content of the paragraph, while “what it does” statements explain the function of the paragraph in the text, according to Bean. Students may not be familiar with looking at texts in this way, so it can help for the instructor to model this process first.  (See “Additional References” for an example of this task.) 

May need to expand their understanding of the rhetorical context (e.g., audience and purpose) 

Create reading guides. Create reading guides (see example at the end of this resource) that include information about the author and the reading’s rhetorical context. Students use the reading guide to navigate through the text, using the information and questions provided to support their reading process.  

Teach students how to “read rhetorically.” Teaching students to attend to considerations of audience and purpose, as well as to recognize strategies employed by the author to accomplish rhetorical goals can help students better understand texts and see them as socially constructed.  (See “Additional References” for more detailed information.) 

Explain disciplinary reading goals to students. Talk to students about the goals for reading in your discipline.  This helps socialize students into your discipline by explicitly highlighting how to “think like a sociologist,” or “think like an engineer” as they’re reading course texts. (See “Additional References” for more detailed information.) 

May need help understanding cultural references and information in texts Create reading guides with an eye to culture. Bean (2011) notes that it can be helpful when instructors “create reading guides that explain cultural codes, allusions, [and] historical events” (p. 181).  Reading guides may also define technical terms or words used in unusual ways.  
May need to develop an effective reading process 

Discuss reading strategies.  Even a brief mention of reading as a strategic process can help students focus on readings and read more effectively in your discipline. Explaining to students the advantages of strategies such as previewing the text, reading for the gist, paraphrasing, and using context to increase understanding can help students make sense of the reading task and make reading complex texts a more manageable process for students.   

Model and assign annotation.  Show students how you annotate texts when you read them and design at least one assignment early in the quarter that requires students to annotate a reading by writing questions, comments, and reactions in the margins of a text. (See “Additional References” for more detailed information.) 

May feel uncomfortable or disoriented when faced with unfamiliar perspectives 

Contrast everyday perspectives and academic perspectives. Bean (2011) notes: “In lectures or discussions, draw contrasts between ordinary ways of looking at the subject and the author’s surprising way” (p. 181).  This may help students to identify and address their own misconceptions.   

Assign reading journals.  Have students write their responses and their reactions to course readings in the margins of the text or in reading journals.  Newton (1991) found that having students write reading journals increased students’ metacognitive awareness. 

Have an “open door” policy.  Be open to discussing students’ thoughts about and reactions to readings during your office hours. Processing the text with a mentor (their instructor) can provide important scaffolding for students as they develop their thinking on a topic. 

May feel overwhelmed by complexity of texts  

Share your experiences with reading. Give students reading tips that you used as a student to make sense of the complex texts in your discipline (e.g., read a section or two, then take a break.) 

Provide opportunities for students to discuss texts in groups. Talking about texts, even for just a few minutes, with others who have read the text can help students expand their understanding of the reading. 

May feel unmotivated to read 

Share your enthusiasm.  Share your enthusiasm for reading, as well as your reading habits: where you like to read, and how you like to read. You might also explain how reading is professionally helpful to you. 

Create assignments that connect to the readings.  Create assignments that require students to integrate information from the readings.  The classic example is the research paper, but others include debates (have students cite research orally), critiques, reader responses that integrate quotes or paraphrases from the articles, and comparative summaries of two or more readings.  

May have difficulty understanding disciplinary vocabulary or complex sentence structure 

Encourage students to paraphrase. Have students paraphrase complex passages in writing. 

Encourage students to guess.  Encourage students to guess from context when possible, or if guessing does not help, encourage them to acquire the habit of using the dictionary while reading. 

Note: The same challenges may occur in one or more stages of reading

Assignment Example:  Reading Guide 

A reading guide is one particular assignment that instructors can design to address challenges such as understanding rhetorical context or identifying an author’s assumptions.  Reading guides provide the opportunity for instructors to impact students’ interaction and engagement with the text in “real time” while students read independently.   

  • Background 
    The following Reading Guide, taken from Bean (2011),  illustrates how one instructor engaged his first-year seminar in the nature/nurture controversy.    
  • Purpose 
    The instructor’s purpose was for students to read an entire peer-reviewed paper on nature/nurture and gender identity.   
  • Design 
    The design of the guide demonstrates the instructor’s own thought processes to students, supports them through their own reading, and stretches their thinking through critical questioning. 
  • Function 
    Bean (2011) notes that “typically, these guides define key terms with special disciplinary meanings, fill in needed cultural knowledge, explain the rhetorical context of the reading, illuminate the rhetorical purpose of genre conventions, and ask critical questions for students to consider as they progress through the text” (p. 174). 

 

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 Reading Guide for a Scientific Article for a First-Year Seminar on Nature/Nurture Controversy in Gender Identity 

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Reading: 

Rebecca Knickmeyer, Simon Baron-Cohen, Peter Raggatt, and Kevin Taylor, “Foetal Testosterone, Social 

Relationships, and Restricted Interests in Children,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2005, 46(2), 198-210. 

Background:  This article can’t be fully understood by non-specialists (you and me) because we aren’t its intended audience.  The authors are writing for clinical biochemists and experimental psychologists who do their research on gendered behaviors.  As non-expert readers, we can’t understand either the biochemistry or the complex methods of statistical analysis. However, we can understand the main gist of their research.  This short reading guide will help you understand the article’s big picture and offer strategies for reading any complex scientific article.  

  1. Look at the six-column reference list at the end. These articles have been closely read by the researchers and constitute the current state of knowledge that the researchers want to add to.  Much of the introduction reviews the important ideas of these articles, identifying what is currently known and still unknown.  Each of the articles in this huge list is explicitly mentioned in the article.  
  2. Read the title of the article and abstract.  The title lets us know that this article attempts to measure the effect of fetal testosterone on two variables: social relationships and restricted interests in children.  The abstract gives you a big picture overview of the whole article. 
  3. Read the introduction – pages 198-200 – trying to understand the basic gist of each paragraph.  This introduction reviews the previous literature (hence all the bibliographic references in parentheses) and explains the general theory behind their research.   

Question 1: If you could read one of the research studies reviewed in the introduction, which would it be and why?  Provide a short explanation for your response. 

  1. Basically, the researchers are going to correlate the amount of fetal testosterone in each mother’s amniotic fluid (taken when the child was in utero) with each mother’s answers for her child on the 

Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC) when the child was four years old.  Read carefully the research hypothesis at the top of page 201, left column (last sentence in introduction).   

Question 2: Restate the hypothesis in ordinary language (as opposed to scientific).  Make the hypothesis understandable to an 8th grader. 

  1. Under METHODS (starting on page 201) read the first two sections: Participants and Outcome Variable: the Children’s Communication Checklist.  Look carefully at Table 1, which gives sample items from the Children’s Communication Checklist.  The range indicates the possible highest and lowest scores for each part of the checklist. The impairment column shows the score below which the child shows an abnormal or “impaired” score.  The sample items column gives examples of questions on the CCC for each part.  Question 3: Based on these sample items, what do you think is meant by “restricted interests”?  How are restricted interests related to autism? 
  2. Skim the rest of METHODS and all of RESULTS.  Focus only on what you can understand; don’t worry about what you don’t understand.  These sections are aimed at insiders with expert knowledge of experimental design and statistical methods.  Note: I probably can’t understand any more than you can and perhaps less than some of you majoring in science.    
  3. Read carefully the DISCUSSION section on pages 205-206 to see the scientists’ discussion of whether their data supported their initial hypotheses.   

Question 4: Based on this study, how would a baby exposed to high levels of fetal testosterone differ in behavior from a baby exposed to lower levels of testosterone, regardless of whether the baby was male or female?  In general, how did boys differ from girls with regard to social relationships and restricted interests?  

  1. Here are two statements from the DISCUSSION section: 
    • “[Our research] indicates that in both boys and girls, higher fT levels are associated with poorer quality of social relationships” (205). 
    • “[Our research] indicates that in both boys and girls, higher fT levels are associated with more restricted interests” (205). 

For each of these results, draw a line graph showing the indicated relationship.  (You don’t need to plot the exact coordinates, just the general shape of the curve.)  Label the axes for clarity to an outside reader and then create a title for your graph that explains what the graph shows.  Before drawing your graph, consider these questions: 

  • What goes on the x-axis?  What is the unit of measurement?
    • What goes on the y-axis?  What is the unit of measurement?
  • Additional Resources
  •  
    • While Reading Tasks
      Examples include annotating texts, graphic organizers, “What It Says/What It Does” tasks, and peer instruction/jigsaw tasks.
    • Word Templates
      Downloadable Word templates for peer instruction/jigsaw and “What It Says/What It Does” tasks that can be customized for your class.
    • Graphic Organizers
      Access “The Use of Graphic Organizers to Enhance Thinking Skills in the Learning of Economics,” an e-book published by Hong Kong University containing numerous graphic organizer exemplars.
    • Graphic Organizer Research
      Evidence-based research on the effectiveness of graphic organizers for increasing text comprehension.
    • Reading Rhetorically Handout
      Handout for students on reading rhetorically from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.
    • Disciplinary Reading Goals
      Lists of disciplinary reading goals for Math and Science from Schoenbach, Greenleaf, and Murphy (2012).
    • Getting the Main Point
      Handout on reading considerations for students from the Bureau of Study Counsel at Harvard University.
  • Citation
  • Turner, P., & Rossi, M. (2019). Engaged reading for learning series: Just-in-Time Teaching Resources. https://cee.ucdavis.edu/JITT
  • References
  • Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

    Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2009). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. Journal of Education, 189(1–2), 107–122.

    Newton, E. (1991). Developing metacognitive awareness: The response journal in college composition. Journal of Reading, 34(6), 476–478. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40032107

    Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., & Murphy, L. (2012). Reading for understanding: How reading apprenticeship improves disciplinary learning in secondary and college classrooms. John Wiley & Sons.