ing are done primarily by the teacher. Then the lesson moves into guided practice and scaffolding, which involves shared responsibility between the teacher and the students. Eventually the students take on more responsibility through independent strategy use, while the teacher plays more of a supportive role. Because of the com-plexities of Web reading, consider introducing and practicing comprehension strate-gies with print text first. When students are confident and comfortable with the use of reading strategies, then instruction in and application of these strategies to Web text will help the students ease into the additional complexities and distractions encountered on the Web. What follows is a brief description of a few key compre-hension strategies and their application to both print and Web-based reading: acti-vating prior knowledge, predicting, deter-mining important ideas, synthesizing, monitoring, and repairing.
Activating Prior Knowledge
Good readers use prior knowledge to check whether their construction of meaning matches what they know about the topic and structure of the text (Duke & Pearson, 2002) by developing connections between the text and themselves, the text and other texts, and the text and the world.
These connections help build a bridge between new information and what is already known. Readers with greater prior knowledge can remember more, deter-mine the important information in the text, and draw conclusions from what they read. Prior knowledge of the topic and the structure of the text provides a starting point from which to move for-ward through the comprehension process.
Web readers must also rely on their prior knowledge to form connections and make meaning. In addition, they draw from their experiences of navigating websites and search engines. These additional sources of prior knowledge add another layer to the complexity of the Internet reading process, so that students who struggle with prior knowledge of the topic or the text structure often find themselves making ran-dom choices as they read on the Internet. Without enough information from which to draw, these readers may feel as if they are looking for a needle in a haystack.
Moreover, one must not assume that because a reader has strong prior knowledge of the topic or the text structure he will necessarily be skilled at reading on the Internet. Without having the experiences of navigating through websites or know-ing the nuances of various search engines, a skilled reader of print text may be at a loss when encountering the Internet. Thus, our description of the skilled Internet
Explicit teaching uses
“strategy” to mean a technique that readers learn to control as a means to better comprehend.
—Duffy (2002, p. 30)
We build up our store of knowledge not so much for its own sake but in order to develop insight. With insight, we think more deeply and critically. We question, interpret, and evaluate what we read. In this way, reading can change thinking.
—Harvey and Goudvis (2000, p. 9)
reader must include a strong level of prior knowledge in the areas of topic, text structure, website organization, and search engine formats.
Predicting
Making predictions is one way to draw a reader into the text. Good readers make predictions before, during, and after reading. Accurate predictions rely on a sensi-tive balance of prior knowledge of the topic, other experiences with similar types of text, and a sense of wonderment or curiosity (Pressley, 2002). A prediction is special kind of inference in which the reader draws from her prior knowledge to make an informed guess about what information will come next (Keatley, 1999). The strat-egy of predicting involves three steps: making the prediction, gathering information to confirm or disconfirm the prediction, then making a judgment about the accu-racy of the prediction. When accurate predictions are made, a reader feels a connec-tion with the text and a sense of understanding, perhaps thinking, “I thought this information would be presented, and it was, so I must be understanding this text.”
When predictions are made that are not confirmed in the text, a reader begins to feel disconnected or lost, which can break down meaning if this occurs too often and is not corrected (Beers, 2004).
Readers of Web texts rely on a similar process of making, confirming, and adjusting predictions. However, not only do Web readers make predictions about what is to come in the text (and within other multimedia elements), they also make predictions about how to move through the text in order to find information. When a reader who wants to know more about how to do an olley on a skateboard and clicks on the hyperlink “olley,” she is mentally making a prediction that this link will lead her to learn more about this skateboarding trick. Making and confirming predictions is a major goal of efficient Web reading. Randomly clicking on links without thoughtful predictions may be interesting when browsing a website, but this strategy is not only frustrating but a waste of time when searching for information.
Determining Important Ideas
Strong readers mentally reduce the text into manageable chunks of key ideas by sift-ing out the important from the unimportant. They determine which important ideas on which to focus their attention during the reading process and which unim-portant details deserve little or no attention (Afflerbach & Johnston, 1986). Before reading, the reader makes predictions
re-garding the main idea through interpreta-tion of the title, and illustrainterpreta-tions and a scanning of the text for key words or headings that can be linked to the reader’s schema, or mental representation of the text. These predictions are verified during the reading process. After reading, the
Given that accomplished readers regularly assess their knowledge, their strategies, and their progress toward goals, we need to specify the means for helping less able readers develop self-assessment mind-sets and strategies. —Afflerbach (2002, p. 99)
reader combines the mental chunks of key ideas into one overall main idea or sev-eral key ideas representing the text in gensev-eral. This process of determining impor-tant ideas differs according to a reader’s purpose for reading, but is especially crucial when reading informational text. Here the reader must both decide and remember what is important if he is going to learn something from the text or find the answer to his question(s). Text features often provide clues to the reader about what is important through the use of the title, headings, and captions.
Determining important ideas when reading Internet text is very similar to the process used for reading print text. One difference in Internet text is the variation of cues that provide hints about what is most important. Headings and captions may be available, but a reader might also draw information from icons, hyperlinks of keywords, bright colors used for highlighting text, and interactive graphics.
Meanwhile, commercial pop-ups and banners are intentionally used to attract the reader’s attention. With all of these visuals, in addition to the text itself, the reader may feel overwhelmed with the amount of information encountered on a webpage. This feeling of being overwhelmed may make it difficult for a reader to determine exactly what is and is not important. Experienced Web readers learn which visuals are merely meant to be distractors and which typically provide important information. These readers are able to determine what is most impor-tant by relying on their prior knowledge of the structure of websites. As with many of the reading strategies for both print and Internet text, we can see an overlapping or intertwining when the task of determining important ideas and prior knowledge come together.
Synthesizing
Synthesizing is thought to be the most challenging of the comprehension strategies because it requires the reader to bring together an awareness of the reading process and an understanding of the text (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991; Harvey &
Goudvis, 2000). Skilled readers learn to stop every so often in their reading and summarize by thinking about what is being read and how this information enhances their understanding and supports the construction of meaning. Strong readers not only sort and summarize the most important ideas from within single texts, but also between texts in order to synthesize ideas to help create an understanding of what is being read. At the highest level, synthesizing goes beyond determining meaning and moves into the development of a new perspective or viewpoint, also known as trans-formation. A reader’s thinking changes based on her transaction with texts, as she comes to “own” her new ideas. Personal responses, whether written or oral, give the reader a chance to work through this new thinking and to share it with others.
Synthesis of Web texts provides a chance for a reader to formulate a new idea or understanding in a similar way as with print text. Information is gathered from one website or by combining ideas from several websites. Still, a reader must determine what is most important and hold those ideas in her memory (if not on a notepad) as she navigates within and between websites. One difference in the synthesis process is that skilled Web readers expect to read in more than one place within a website or
to read more than one website to locate the answer to a question. They understand that the answer will likely not jump out at them but rather will require the making of inferences and the summarizing and bringing together of ideas from separate loca-tions. We return to the topic of synthesizing in Chapter 7.
Monitoring
Strong readers tend to be careful in their reading and spend more time on difficult parts of the text. These readers possess the metacognitive ability to mentally sum-marize chunks of the text during and after reading to monitor their process of mak-ing meanmak-ing. They are more aware of their level of understandmak-ing or lack of under-standing and can skillfully maneuver between skimming, scanning, and slow, careful reading. Skilled readers use skimming by initially glancing over the text to deter-mine the topic and type of text and so decide if these ideas match their purpose for reading. Scanning is used to quickly read a text, noting headings, bold words, dates, numbers, or other details that stand out for the reader. Careful reading requires mov-ing through the text at a pace slow enough to notice, understand, and remember details. Not only can skilled readers adjust their reading rate, but they can also adjust their use of reading strategies in order to better understand a text. When the text structure or vocabulary is difficult, good readers use various strategies, such as rereading, to repair meaning (Pressley, 2002). The opposite is true for poor readers, who are typically less careful with their
reading and often do not recognize the loss of meaning when new words or con-cepts are unknown. When problems do arise with comprehension, these readers have few strategies for getting their com-prehension back on track.
Web readers must also monitor their comprehension throughout the reading process by combining the use of traditional monitoring strategies with an under-standing that the information in Web text may be hidden below the screen or beneath several layers of links on a website. The homepage of a website may contain information the reader is seeking, but often desired information is gained only through navigating several links, taking the reader within the depths of the website.
Monitoring comprehension through these various layers is a more complex process than merely checking whether the text is making sense to the reader. The reader must also check to make sure he knows where he is within the text and have a fairly good idea of how to find the information he needs.
Repairing
Good readers know what to do when they discover that meaning has been lost.
They anticipate problems and take action to solve problems as soon as they arise.
Using what are often called “fix-up” strategies, skilled readers select an appropriate mental tool or strategy to repair confusion (Garner, 1987). The strategies may
Good readers know when they need to exert more effort to make sense of a text.
—Pressley (2001, online)
include rereading, skipping ahead, or searching for context clues. Skilled readers are also more flexible in their use of strategies, displaying an ability to change strategies to meet different reading situations.
All of the reading strategies described in this chapter can serve as effective fix-up strategies for a skilled reader. In fact, a reader may use two or more of these gies simultaneously as a bundle of strate-gies to be accessed as needed. When com-prehension is occurring, the reader is often unaware of how the text is being processed. Yet when a reader becomes stuck and comprehension is lost, she shifts into a metacognitive mode in order to draw upon effective strategies. We recognize a loss of comprehension when we pause in reading and say to ourselves, “What did I just read? I am not sure, so I better go back and read again.”
When reading within search engines and across websites, Internet readers also reread to gain meaning or scan a webpage to search for context clues. In order for these readers to use fix-up strategies, they must be adept at navigating within and between websites. A reader who wants to reread a text must know how to return to that text, whether this is done through the use of the back button, following the links back to the webpage, or finding the webpage listed on the drop-down menu or history list. Several paths will take the reader back to the same information, although some paths are more efficient than others. Less-skilled readers may lose sight of what they are looking for or even forget the information they already understood. Again, the interweaving of navigation and comprehension clearly impacts the Web reader.
The strategies used by proficient readers represent a collection of those habits or thought processes necessary for making meaning from text. These strategies are often used simultaneously when reading;
for example, we might ask a question, make a prediction, and monitor our com-prehension, all within a few seconds.
While some readers may not need explicit instruction in comprehension strategies to use when reading print, we know that many less-skilled readers do—and that all readers must be prepared to read on the Web, which is a more complex activity than reading printed texts.