Becoming An Advanced Reader

Why should anyone bother to read in a world in which artificial intelligence will soon be able to do pretty much anything you want it to? This video explains 3 key reasons why reading is and will continue to be one of the vital skills of the future: it builds empathy, which makes us more productive and creative; it builds vocabulary, which makes us more intelligent; and it makes us more likely to become fulfilled in our future lives.

Learn about the importance of regular habits from some of the most creative and productive minds in the world, and then consider some of the key questions you need to answer in order to get yourself into great reading habits: when and where are you going to read? How are you going to concentrate while reading? And how are you going to stick to your new habits?

Now that you’ve completed Section 1 of the course, it’s a great moment to reflect on your reading habits and to set yourself some reading targets. Setting and monitoring SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time dependent) targets is a great way to achieve your goals. You’ll need to print out the attached resource and fill it in using the instructions in the video to help you. Then, you’ll need to make a regular habit of monitoring how well you are achieving your new targets.

There are 4 skills which great readers use when they are reading any text. They may not even think about it, but they’re almost certain to be reading in this way. The thing that links all these skills is that, when you use them, they make you approach any text ACTIVELY. This video simply explains what that means, and then shows you the skills in order, introducing the process in very broad terms. As you begin to master these skills, you will start to become a more advanced reader. The following videos will go into more detail with each skill.

Predicting is the first and most important of the active reading skills that you need to master to become a great reader. Predictions should be based on any knowledge you currently have of the text; they should also be precise. This video explains how to make strong predictions and introduces you to the predicting cycle, which is a mini-cycle within the bigger active reading cycle. It’s a great way to get going as an active reader.

Clarifying is probably the most straightforward of the active reading skills. To clarify means “to make clear”, so all you’ve got to do when using this skill is to make sure that you’ve understood what you’ve read. This video will teach you not only the best kinds of questions to ask to check your understanding of a text, but will also give invaluable advice about how to read so that you don’t fall into the common trap that weak readers fall into when they read. There are important tips here about your reading speed and the ways to focus when reading. The attached handout presents these clarifying questions clearly in an easily downloadable format.

Questioning deeply is what makes reading one of the most stimulating and inspiring activities that a person can engage in. It’s also not an easy skill to master because it requires asking the right questions at the right moment, and then thinking creatively and, at the same time, finding the best evidence in the text in order to answer those questions meaningfully and persuasively. This video explains the difference between clarifying and questioning, presents you with a series of great, deeper questions you can ask about any text, and then shows you how to go through the process of questioning well using a simple children’s nursery rhyme to show the power of great questioning. The attached handout presents these deeper questions clearly in an easily downloadable format.

Summarising means making a brief description of the main points of what you have just read. That’s why it comes last in the Active Reading Cycle. A good summary should describe only the main events of the section you’ve read, give brief details on the feelings or personalities of those involved, and provide some comments on the main ideas you came up with when you were doing the previous questioning activity. Using Little Red Riding Hood as an example, this video shows you the difference between a good and a bad summary, and explains how to make summarising a fun challenge.

This video starts by revisiting the overview of the Active Reading Cycle, and then runs through key aspects of each of the four skills from the cycle in a brief recap, which you can use to jog your memory or as a quick reminder of stand-out things to consider at each stage of the cycle. It’s a great 5-minute resource! Attached here you can also find the Active Reading Skills Reading Log, which you should download and use as a place to record your discussions and thoughts about all the different stages of the cycle as you read each new chapter or unit of a book. Downloading the log in digital format is probably the best way to use it, as you can then have control over the table size and can add new rows as you need.

The advanced reading skills which I’m going to give you in these videos are called the Active Exploration Process. This is a process you should really use after you’ve read an entire text. It’s a straightforward process with just two parts and in this video you’ll see the process outlined in its very broadest terms. The video ends with a mysterious question about a painting…

You can’t explore any written text meaningfully if you haven’t looked at it in its entirety and tried to grapple with the big ideas of the whole text first. This video shows you why it’s so important to get the big picture ideas first. It also gives you a whole series of questions you should ask yourself in order to think about what those big ideas of any text might be. In order to illustrate ways in which you might answer these big picture questions, we go through a whole text - in this case a short and beautiful poem by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats - using it as an example of how to build up a big-picture understanding of a text. Have a pen in your hand and be ready to pause the video in the middle to carry out a task. Also, you should download the attached handout in advance so that you have the big picture questions on hand when the time comes.

By analysing specific aspects of texts in depth, we can strengthen our understanding of the big ideas of that text. This longer video goes through the method of doing this deeper analysis in order to support the big picture ideas. The method is carefully explained, using diagrams to help you. It is applied to various aspects of a text in order for you to see it in action and truly get to grips with how it works. The poem being explored is again Yeats’ Song of the Old Mother. You are introduced to the concept of “Aspects of Texts” and there are two handouts to help you: one with a list of these aspects of texts that can be analysed, and the other with a range of questions you can ask in order to delve into each of the aspects. The handouts also form a key part of the diagrammatic explanations in the video, so again it is useful for you to have them printed out as you watch the video.

The third handout with this video is called "Active Exploration Process - Notes". This is for you to download and use in order to make notes any time you use the Active Exploration Process when you have finished reading a book. Here you can record all your big picture ideas about the book and there is also a space for you to include deeper analysis to support each of those big picture ideas. You should use this handout every time you complete a book. The final videos refer to it and explain how to use it in more detail.

Now that you’ve completed Section 3 of the course, it’s time to update your reflections on your reading habits and your reading targets. As with Activity One, print out the attached resource and fill it in using the instructions in the video to help you. Then, you’ll need to continue with that regular habit of monitoring how well you are achieving your new targets.

You may have completed the course, but you will need to continue using the resources you met here over the coming months if you really want to internalise the ideas and processes you need to become an expert reader. This final video explains why it’s important to carry on using the resources as you read, suggests when you can stop using them, and encourages you on your lifelong reading journey. Enjoy your reading!