What Harvard Tells Its Freshman about Reading and Studying

Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard

http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/lamont_handouts/interrogatingtexts.html

This article came to my attention while reading Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement, by Harvey and Goudvis.  First, I just love the idea of 'interrogating' the text.  Grilling the text like a detective wringing every late bit of usable information out of a suspect.  And then, when I reviewed the article in full I realized the very real uses this could have (and does have) in our classrooms and what even our youngest students could be practicing as they read to learn and prepare, little by little, to be successful with academic reading. 

Below are the basic tenets of the article and a link  above to read it in full.

1. Previewing: Look “around” the text before you start reading.
"Previewing enables you to develop a set of expectations about the scope and aim of the text. These very preliminary impressions offer you a way to focus your reading."

2. Annotating: “Dialogue” with yourself, the author, and the issues and ideas at stake. 
"...throw away the highlighter in favor of a pen or pencil. Highlighting can actually distract from the business of learning and dilute your comprehension. It only seems like an active reading strategy; in actual fact, it can lull you into a dangerous passivity....Mark up the margins of your text with WORDS...Develop your own symbol system...Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions."

3. Outline, summarize, analyze: take the information apart, look at its parts, and then try to put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you.
"The best way to determine that you’ve really gotten the point is to be able to state it in your own words."

4. Look for repetitions and patterns.
"...indications of what an author considers crucial."

5. Contextualize: After you’ve finished reading, put the reading in perspective.
"Your understanding of the words on the page and their significance is always shaped by what you have come to know and value from living in a particular time and place."

6. Compare and Contrast: Fit this text into an ongoing dialogue.
"How has your thinking been altered by this reading or how has it affected your response to the issues and themes of the course?"