mean in the context of a passage about whales?’ The student pauses, thinks for a
minute, and then says, ‘The whales, they are disappearing?’
‘Yes,’ replies the teacher; ‘scientists are concerned that whales will disappear if
conditions do not improve. Good. Do you know what “rescuing” means now?’
The students nod. One volunteers, ‘saving.’ ‘OK,’ says the teacher. ‘Does anyone
want to make a prediction about what the main idea is in the second paragraph?’
Several students venture that it may talk about the conditions that are not good for
whales.
‘That’s a good guess,’ says the teacher. ‘Let’s see if your predictions are correct.
Skim the second paragraph now. This time, however, I am only going to give you one
and a half minutes.’
The lesson proceeds like this until by the fourth paragraph, the students are given
only a half a minute to skim for the main idea.
‘Great. We are off to a good beginning. We will practice more with this tomorrow.’
Next the students evaluate how they have done. Some feel distressed because they
still feel that they need to understand every word. However, others are feeling better
because they realize that their reading assignments need not take as long as they have
been taking. Some students discuss their implementation of the strategy and how they
modified it.
The teacher encourages them to share any innovations they made. All of the
students feel that they need a lot more practice with this new strategy.
‘Yes,’ responds the teacher, ‘and you will begin tonight. For homework, I would
like you to use your new strategy on something that you would like to read—a
newspaper or magazine article, for example. Don’t just begin by reading the first
sentence. See what you can learn from reading the headline or title. See if there are
any pictures with captions. Then when you do go to read, read the first paragraph first.
When you come to a word you don’t know, skip over it and continue. See what you
can learn about the main idea of the article in this way. Then write about this
experience in your learning journals. That’s all for today.’