Module 1 Lesson 1

Active Reading Strategies: Text Features and Visual Cues

Key Terms

Active Reading Strategies - Tools to help readers understand and make meaning from what they read.

Text Features - Elements of text that stand out from other parts of the page. Text features can include boldface, text boxes, and titles.

Visual Cues - Elements of the page that stand out and grab your attention.

What is Active Reading?

​Using Text Features and Visual Cues


Signs tell you something. They tell you where to look, where to go, and what to do. They use text features like lists and visual cues like colors, shapes, and symbols to get their message across.

Text features, like titles and words in bold, work with visual cues, like pictures and symbols, to help you figure out the main point the writer is making.

Use what's on the page to read faster. There are many text features and visual cues here. The title of this page is "More Phrases." The words "phrasal compound" are in blue on the page and in the title in the box below. The main idea of this page must be "phrasal compounds." There's a sentence by itself on the page. I bet that has an example of a phrasal compound.

The burner on the left is on. The one on the right isn’t. What do you predict will happen to the eggs?

Active readers make predictions. A prediction is your best guess about what is going to happen. Predictions happen before and during reading. They often have to be revised or changed.

Make predictions to stay focused. The title says "Three Groups of Academic Words" and the animation has three slides. I can predict that each slide will talk about one of the groups.

Predicting

What’s on sale? Is it just the stuff no one wants? Is this store going out of business? Can you lend me some money? You are constantly asking questions about what you see and read.

Asking questions keeps you interested in what you are reading. It also helps you get the information you need.

If you don't ask questions, you can't get answers. What are phrasal compounds? Do I ever use them? How is knowing about them going to make reading easier?

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Asking Questions

When people ask you how your day was or what they missed at a party, your answer is a summary of the information they are asking for. You also summarize when you explain a book, movie, game, and much more.

Summarizing is using a few of your own words to state the main idea of what you have read or heard.

Summarize it to own it. There's a lot of information here. I should summarize quickly to check if I got the most important points. My summary is: Knowing common prefixes and suffixes helps make hard words easier to understand.

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Summarizing

You have to buy five things at the store. Making a mental picture helps you remember what's on the list.

When you make mental images, you create a picture in your mind of what you are reading. If you can picture something, it's easier to remember.

Remember it your way. When I read "divided into three branches," I make a mental picture. My mental picture is a tree with three branches. When I read "highest elected office," I picture the executive branch at the top of the tree.

Making Mental Images

Even though this picture isn’t complete, you know what it is. You’re given enough information to see that this will be a star. You connect the dots and make your own conclusion.

Drawing inferences is sometimes called "reading between the lines" or "connecting the dots." An inference is a conclusion you make based on what you read and what you already know.

It's not always on the page. The text asks me how many different ways I can say "head." The image has three words: "noggin," "head," and "cranium." I can infer that "noggin" and "cranium" are two other ways to say "head," even though the text doesn't tell me that directly.

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Drawing Inferences

​If you were trying to figure out how to fix a flat tire, you might need to ask: What’s a tire liner? To find out, you could go back and reread to see if you missed something, or you could read ahead to see if there is an explanation. This is monitoring and using fix-up strategies.

Monitoring means that you check to make sure you understand what you are reading. If you don't understand something you are reading, apply fix-up strategies to fix the problem.

1. Slow down. If you are reading too fast, it might not make sense.

2. Reread. Go back to the last thing you understood and start reading again.

3. Keep reading. If you keep reading when things get confusing, the text might give an explanation.

It's not a race. This page is a review of everything I learned. I need to stop here and monitor my understanding. Do I know all of the words in blue? Do I remember why each is important? If not, I should apply a fix-up strategy like rereading.

​Monitoring and Applying Fix-Up Strategies

Look at this remote control. It probably looks different from the one you have at home. But you could figure out how to turn on the TV or change channels based on what you know. This is activating your prior knowledge.

When you activate prior knowledge, you think about what you already know about a topic. This gets your mind ready to take in new information on that topic faster and better.

You already know what. I know a family is a group of people who are related. My prior knowledge helps me here. I can start thinking about how some words can be related to one another.​

Activating Prior Knowledge

Elements of the page that stand out from the regular text are text features and visual cues. They help readers identify the main idea and important information.

Some elements to look for in a text are:

• Titles, subheadings, or chapter titles

• Lists of words or phrases

• Words in boldface, color, or italics

• Images, symbols, or graphics

The title, boldfaced words, bulleted list, and image on this page all point to the main focus — text features and visual cues!

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Text Features and Visual Cues

Look for text features and visual cues in this example and see if you can figure out the main focus of the page.

Making Inferences
As readers, we are constantly making inferences by gathering details from a text and drawing conclusions. We gather two kinds of details while we read:

• Explicit or directly stated details

• Implicit or implied details

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Using Text Features

Multiple Choice

Based on the text features and visual cues in this example, what is the main focus of the page?

• • Implicit details

• • Explicit details

• • A conclusion based on what you read

• • Making inferences

You might need to look closely at text features to get a sense of the author's purpose in an informational text.

Below, look at part of the table of contents for a book called The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, and see if you can figure out the author's purpose.

​Text Features

Multiple Choice

Based on the key words in the title and in the table of contents, what is most likely the purpose of this book?

• • To explain how the depiction of monsters in different cultures changed over time

• • To inspire the reader with tales of brave heroes throughout history who battled monsters

• • To argue that we must face our own "monsters" in order to live a full life

In informational texts, text features and visual cues are often easy to find and understand.

Fictional texts like stories, novels, and poems usually don't include obvious text features. However, book and chapter titles can give clues to the theme or genre.

Try matching some book titles to their genres. You don't need to have read the books to do the exercise. Just make guesses based on the key words.

Finding meaning in a fictional text can be like solving a crossword puzzle.

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Text Features and Visual Cues in Literature

Match

Match the following

• "All the Light We Cannot See"

• "The Time Machine"

• "Hostile Witness"

• "Bossypants"

Literary fiction

Science fiction

Thriller

Comedy

• Literary fiction

• Science fiction

• Thriller

• Comedy

• Tomorrow, we will complete Module 1, Lesson 2

• Quiz 1 is due on Wednesday, September 13th

• Review announcements for September schedule

• Review "Welcome to English 12" email

• Please call or email with any questions!

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Wrap Up

Multiple Select

Review!

What are some common text features and visual cues?

• Paper size, shape, and color

• Images, symbols, and graphics

• 
  Lists

• Boldface, colors, and italics

• Titles, subheadings, and chapter titles