Amp Up Your Reading During Winter Break

It’ll be 1 Week – Let’s Position Ourselves for a Continued Successful New Term

The start of a new semester + 1 week of Winter Holiday time = Maximum & Quality Reading Time

Top 10 Best of Strategies to position yourself for continued academic success. View reading as a method of processing info, concepts and main ideas, rather than a receptive act of reading each word

1.  Define a purpose for reading & a strategy to compliment that purpose  Tip:  Check out this Reading Handout at the ASC Website Building Comprehension

2.  Focus your reading attention by answering questions or by searching for key words and phrases

3.  Take frequent, brief, power breaks to relax.  Read for 25 minutes; take a 5 minute breaks.  Grab a drink of water, a light snack, a walk around the block or 4 deep breaths and a stretch or 2

4.  Introduce yourself to a chapter:  Get to know the chapter outline, introduction, illustrations, diagrams and summary

5.  Highlight text only after you say or rephrase it and then write it in your own words or recreate it through images/diagrams in margins or index cards  Tip:  Highlight no more than 1/5 of your text book

6. Create a mental image about the info you read.  Double it up by creating index cards or mind maps to ‘concrete’ this image

7.  Summarize out loud the main ideas.  Schedule 3 to 5 minutes for every 25 minutes you study

8.  Turn the bold titles of the chapter into questions.  Answer by writing notes in the margin.  Tip:  Focus on main ideas, then on facts.

9.  Create short quizzes or practice questions to test your understanding of the material.  Tip:  The chapter review questions are a great start

10.  Increase your reading rate by reading newspaper articles quickly to answer the W5 questions