Center for Teaching and Learning
Focused Inquiry Groups (FIGs) - BSI
Reading Apprenticeship - Members - Patricia
Reading Apprenticeship Faculty Inquiry Group
2008 - 2009
Reading apprenticeship Faculty
Inquiry Group (FIG) focuses on improving student reading across disciplines. The
members of the FIG include instructors from English, ESL, History, and
In an effort to help students with science reading, several techniques were
implemented in the Human Physiology class in the spring 2009 semester: 1)
reading demonstration by the instructor, 2) muddiest point index cards, and 3)
reading logs on lab assignments.
Students in the Human Physiology
class are at different reading levels. Some already graduated with science
degrees; some are struggling with science reading. In order to introduce reading
to the class, the instructor did a science textbook reading demonstration. The
goal of this demonstration is an attempt to open up an expert science reader’s
(i.e. the science instructor) reading process, therefore, allowing the students
to gain a new insight into science reading.
Discussion and demonstration:
After the demonstration, students were more surprised to learn that it is OK to
skip information which is not relevant to the main point. Most students had a
hard time deciding what is relevant and what is not because they never did a
line-by-line analysis of their own reading. Other students were surprised at the
amount of time is needed to really extract useful information from the text.
- Read outline of the chapter to gain a sense of information organization.
- Highlight text: read the sentence first and decide if the information is
important then highlight.
- “Talking to the Text”: it requires the reader to actively speak out what
he/she is thinking about the text. The following were demonstrated while the
instructor read aloud each sentence of a paragraph from the physiology textbook:
- Decide if the information is critical to the understanding of the new
concept. If not, skip.
- If the information is confusing, stop and solve the problem.
- If the information is important, how does it fit into a larger scheme or
previously learned knowledge.
- If a figure/table is mentioned in the text, read it.
- Try to visualize the information.
- Take breaks when losing concentration.
- Write hints or notes on the margin as reminders.
Muddiest Point Index Card
The idea of the muddiest point index
card is to encourage students to review lecture notes and/or read the textbook
after the lecture. They will write down questions they have about the material
on the index card while reviewing, bring them to the next class, and the
instructor will answer them.
The index card did not invoke too much enthusiasm from the students because most
of the students simply do not review after the lecture. They tend to cram the
material before the midterm.
The reading log (Appendix A) is a very useful tool to
force the students to slow down their reading and take charge of what they read.
The student must write down what information in the reading interested or
confused them in one column, then attempt to respond to the information in a
The reading log was implemented in the class after the second midterm. The
students were required to do the reading logs on the lab assignments only, not
on the physiology text. The rationale of this decision was based on the fact
that the preface of each lab contained basic and important material covered in
the lecture. If the students were able to digest the basic information first
through the reading log, it will make the textbook reading easier.
The instructor’s concern on reading log implementation was the extra time
required for the students to complete the assignment. The instructor was
expecting high number of complaints and low completion of the logs. But on the
contrary, the response from the students after implementation was extremely
positive. Here are a couple of student comments:
1. I really slowed down my reading and noticed a lot of important information
which I missed before.
2. I now tried to extract useful information from the text instead of just
glancing over it without knowing what is there.
Students even requested to do the reading logs when none were assigned for
The effectiveness of the reading log may be seen from the lab practical scores.
The material covered on the 3rd lab practical was more difficult than the
second, but the average of the 3rd lab practical was higher than 2nd lab
A couple of surveys were given to the students during the spring semester: 1)
Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) (Appendix B) and
2) science reading questionnaire (Appendix C). The
MARSI survey gives an insight on which reading strategies are utilized by
students in science class. The science reading questionnaire analyzes student’s
attitude towards science textbooks, reading assignment, and reading.
Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI)
To be added . . .
Science Reading Questionnaire
The questionnaire was given to both the Human Anatomy and Human Physiology
classes through Survey Monkey. The results will be analyzed at the end of the