Why teach skimming and scanning

To meet the needs of English-language learners ELLs , consider pairing them with classmates who share the same native language so they may converse in their primary language when necessary. The focus of the sample game is on ancient Rome and Greece, but you can create your own bingo board to meet other state content area standards.

You will need one computer for each pair of students and may need to reserve your school's computer lab for Session 2. Arrange to have a demonstration computer with Internet access and either a video projector or a large-screen monitor available during Session 1.

Bookmark Social Studies for Kids on the computers students will be using. You will want to familiarize yourself with the links where students find answers so you can help them as necessary when they play the game.

Student Objectives. Students will Develop skill in selecting key terms by conducting Internet searches to find necessary information Develop skill in skimming and scanning by using websites to find information for a bingo game Understand the purposes of using skimming and scanning by practicing these skills in order to win a game. Session 1. Seat students so they can view your computer screen. The use of a video projector or large-screen monitor is ideal for this step.

Introduce the skills of skimming reading quickly to get the main idea of the text and scanning rapidly viewing the text in search of key terms, phrases, or information. Write the terms and their definitions on the chalkboard or whiteboard. You may choose to have students copy them into notebooks. Navigate to Odyssey Online: Rome: Daily Life and spend about five minutes using a think-aloud to model both skimming and scanning. For instance, you might say the following: Suppose I was doing the report on what life was like in ancient Rome, and I came across this website.

I don't want to read every word of every website that I find on the topic of ancient Rome, so I'd want to quickly decide whether this article would be helpful for my report. The first thing I would do is read the title and subheadings. Read them aloud. Now, I want to skim the article to find out if I think it will be helpful to read it all.

I read the first paragraph to get a better idea of it. Read aloud the first paragraph and then continue to use a think-aloud approach to skim and scan through the rest of the article. Lead a brief discussion to review the purposes of using skimming and scanning.

Questions for discussion include: Why do you think it would be helpful to skim or scan an article, rather than read the entire text? Do you think there are times that you would need to read the entire article instead of simply skimming and scanning it?

Discuss how to select key terms to use when conducting Internet searches. For example, tell students that you want to find out about swords that were used in ancient Greece. Display the Social Studies for Kids website and demonstrate how to use the search make sure you click the radio button next to This Site and not The Web.

Use a think-aloud approach and student input to work through the following steps: a. Demonstrate how a search term that is too broad will deliver too many possible sites e. Demonstrate how a search term that is too narrow will not produce sufficient sites e.

By thinking aloud, work on revising the search to "ancient Greece weapons. Demonstrate how to select the links from this website that will potentially be most helpful. Review the terms skimming and scanning while doing this. This means I may earn a small commission if you use one of my links, at no extra cost to you. This helps me continue to provide helpful resources for teachers.

Thank you! Reading Strategies: Skimming and Scanning. Post Contents. ESL Teacher Want to teach online or abroad? Follow my Instagram. Join Facebook Group. Other Posts on the Blog. Thanks for visiting ESL Teacher ! The world is yours to teach and explore! Leave a comment. Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Give children a sample of texts which they need to skim read to determine if it is fiction or non-fiction.

This is a good activity to do before reading any book. It also provides an excellent opportunity to discuss key differences in structure between fiction and non-fiction texts. Using structured text, such as that found in encyclopaedias or school science books, children complete as much of a mind-map as possible in a short-time frame. The focus for this activity is on headings, then sub-heading and sub-sub-headings followed by key information picked up by skimming paragraphs.

Ensure children get into the habit of reading the questions before reading the text. Ask children to highlight the key word in a question and then to scan the text for the key words and then rapidly read the sentence containing the key word to see if that will provide the answer to the question. Skimming and scanning are particularly important skills when navigating the vast amount of resources and information contained on the internet.

Children need to be able to quickly determine if a particular site is likely to contain the required information and then skim read to locate that information. The first step in this process is for children to determine the key terms that will be useful in locating a manageable, but useful number of sites.

If the terms chosen are too broad, there will be too many sites to navigate. If the terms chosen are too narrow, there will be insufficient information. Provide children with a bingo board on your topic of choice similar to the one in the image. In pairs students use the internet to attempt to find the answer to as many questions as possible.

The goal is to find the answers to all the questions in a row or a column.