Helping Students Deeper Read Digital Material

 This past Wednesday, I spoke about the differences between reading hard copy and digital materials.  Today, I thought I'd look at some of the ways to help students learn to deeply read digital materials since there seems to be a shift that way.  Even many adults are reading using digital devices.  I do because it is easier to haul a reader with me than to haul several boxes of books.

Many of the strategies developed for use with digital books have been adapted from ones used with regular books.  Students need these digitally applied reading strategies because digital books are so new, the research is just catching up with the use of books and students need the skills to learn best.

1.  Heading and Highlighting Strategy - using Google Docs, post an excerpt of the digital article you want them to read.  It could even be a part of the textbook.  Ask students to open the document and read it to themselves.  They should highlight the words they do not understand.  Next divide students up into groups of two and have them read one paragraph or section highlighting the key topics.  After they've spent a few minutes on this, ask them to come up with a four word heading based on the key ideas they identified and write it on their copy of the document using a document outline tool.

As students to type the four word heading into a google document set up for this activity.  Have students compare headings to see how their differs before discussing why theirs is better than the others but they do not act on anything yet.  This means they have to dig deeply into the text to come up with a four word summery.  Then  combine pairs into groups of four who decide which groups heading is the best for the selection.  At this point, have the groups share their choice and write them on the board.  Let the students vote on the best four word heading after they've had a chance to discuss all the headings.  Although this can be done with pen and paper, it is a good way to have students achieve deeper reading of the digital material.

2. Highlighting strategy - is a strategy that takes highlighting a step farther than just coloring an idea. When students open the document and then get the highlighter add-on that allows students to assign various colors to various ideas and then the information can be exported to create a table with all the ideas.  Rather than just highlighting, students are getting a chance to organize the materials into something that helps them read the material better.  Once they have the table, they need to add another column and they can summarize the ideas for each color in the new column.  This asks them to reflect on what they've highlighted and they learn to consolidate the information.  This site helps explain how to use the tool.

Furthermore, this same highlighting can be used for new vocabulary words where they can define the words in the chart.  It can also be used for examples for students to identify steps that are the same across several different examples so students see how things work.

3 GSSW: Gather, Sort, Shrink, and Wrap is a method that could easily be used on digital material to help students with deep reading.  For the gather stage, students break up into pairs where they will read the material out loud while looking for ideas that seem to stand out or lead to other ideas.  The other way to do this is for the teacher to read the material out loud stopping on a regular basis so students can discuss the material and take a few notes.

Sort is where the class groups ideas to help students retain and understand the material better.  Students can work in groups and list the themes together digitally such as on a google slide or a padlet or similar app.  This often leads to discussion on what the theme is or what the steps are.

In shrink, students distill the list of themes into essential thoughts that are expressed in their own words via several sentences.  Each sentence represents a depth of knowledge and real understanding and are at a place where they should be able to explain the material to someone else.

The final stage is wrap in which students summarize the material and share it out in a mind map, graphic organizer, presentation, or other form.  As the student follows the process from gather to wrap, they find, distill, and organize the main ideas so they've accomplished deep reading and better understanding of the material.

Just a few ways to teach students so they can develop deep reading when using digital material so they spend more time on the actual material rather than skimming over it. Students need these strategies to develop deeper understanding of what they are learning.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.