Lesson: Skimming

Lesson: Skimming

Description

The purpose of this lesson is to teach students how and why to skim textual material. Skimming enables students to begin identifying the main ideas of a text by reading first and last paragraphs, beginning sentences in other paragraphs (topic sentences), and noting other organizational clues such as title, bold type, italics, capitalized words, captions etc. In skimming, students are not looking for specific information as in scanning. Skimming enables students to cover a large amount of textual material in a limited amount of time.

Learning Outcomes I Suggested Procedure I Assessment for this Lesson

Materials for this Offline lesson:

Multiple copies of an article no more than one page long
Other articles or informational books
Post-It Paper
Markers

Time allotment: 30 minutes

Grade Level: Grade 3 - 12

Information Literacy Standard:
1. The student who is information literate accesses information efficiently and effectively.

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to skim textual information and identify the main ideas of the text.

Suggested Procedure

As a whole class, discuss the definition of skimming and the purpose of skimming. The teacher may want to have the class compare this with the students' definition of scanning.

Provide each student with a copy of one article.
Together, read the first and last paragraphs.
Have the class predict what they believe are the author's main ideas or themes.
Write this on post it paper.

Now have the class read the beginning sentences of the rest of the paragraphs.

Ask the class if they would like to add or change their prediction.
Add these new or changed predictions to the list.

Have the students note other organizational clues and, again, see if they would like to add to or change their prediction. Have the class add to the prediction list.

Read the entire article as a class. Discuss the author's main ideas after completing the reading. Have the class compare what they believe are the author's main ideas with the predictions the class made together.

Assessment

Provide students with additional articles or informational books. In pairs, have them practice predicting the main ideas by reading first and last paragraphs, beginning sentences of paragraphs and noting other organizational clues. As a homework assignment, have each of the students independently read the entire piece and record what they believe are the main ideas or themes. Have the pairs compare their ideas when they return to class. Have them check to see if they agree with one another as well as with their predictions.

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This page was last updated February 21, 2002
This lesson was created to support the AT&T/UCLA Initiatives for 21st Century Literacies.
Skimming was created by Judith Kantor