eBook News

 Good reading is always more than just putting the letters together to make words. You need to read for comprehension, fluency, learning, association, and more. One strategy that helps new or struggling readers is Reading While Listening, that is where the reader silently reads while someone else reads aloud. The research available consistently demonstrates its favorable contribution to improving reading fluency. Since improving fluency is an instructional goal of elementary schools, we should always be on the lookout for tools that can assist in improving reading fluency.  Children who are reluctant to read or who have low rates of fluency can benefit from hearing a text read aloud while they follow in a print version. When they are able to hear the words and phrases, they increase their speed and prosody (intonation) appropriate to the material being read, and are able to identify more words. In this case, though, I not thinking of reading silently. Fluency is defined a...

The process of taking notes, makes reading that much more of an active process and will aid in comprehension and retention. The addition of your own personal notes are usually easier to understand and remember than textbook material. As a student reads the textbook, he or she may not remember all of that they read when they have finished - this is especially true of very dense texts. But, if a student reads the information and also writes down notes about what he or she is reading at the same time, then that extra step reinforces that information and improves retention. So one of the best ways to retain information you are reading it is to take notes while you are actually reading it, for print books these notes were usually written in the margins of the text and so were called margin notes.  The taking of margin notes is a strategy that focuses your attention on important information from the textbook, novels, or articles that you are reading. Because it involves ...

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text.  These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted.  The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be ...