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Stan Skrabut: Welcome back. Thanks ever so much for taking time to listen to this podcast. It certainly means a lot. I know you could be doing other things. The fact that you’re still hanging out with me, I really appreciate it. This week, we are going to take a look at another strategy that I picked up at the Air Force Academy Preparatory School. It is a strategy that has helped me as I worked through all my degree programs, but also while I was in the Air Force itself. It is a strategy I think that can help your students do better in your classes.
The strategy is called SQ3R, or SQR3. It really depends on how you want to go about it. Normally, it’s SQ3R. I thought this learning strategy was important enough that I also included it in my book called Read to Succeed: The Power of Books to Transform Your Life and Put You on the Path to Success. Basically, it is how to read more actively.
What is SQ3R? It is a reading strategy that turns reading from a passive activity into an active one. It’s going to require that your students read with a purpose. As a result, they will remember and understand more about your particular topic.
The SQ3R method simplifies the process that Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren outlined in their book, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. These guys, they were definitely some academic. How they approached a book, basically just dissects it every different way. Adler and Van Doren provided a detailed process for just analyzing a book. Most students I know won’t go to such length, however, I do believe that SQ3R will help them read better. What is it? SQ3R is a five-step process for active reading for comprehension. The five steps include surveying, questioning, reading, reciting, reviewing.
Basically, it’s broken up into three major processes. You’re pre-reading, which is where you’re going to do your surveying and questioning. You’re reading, which is where you do your reading and take your notes. Finally, the post-reading, which is where you do the reciting and reviewing. Let’s take a look at each step.
The first step is surveying or scheming. When you’re scheming a book or surveying a book or a chapter, you’re trying to get a feel for it. You’re trying to get into the head of the author, figure out how they’ve constructed this, what the structure is all about. Also, you are activating your prior knowledge, or your background information.
I talked about this topic last week, in episode ITC: 89. Definitely, go check that out. When you’re surveying a book, you’re trying to understand the overall topic, trying to get a feel for the layout or the structure, determine what kind of reading level it is, just those type of things. Here’s a list of things that you want to look at when you’re surveying a book. You can help guide students through this. They may never have seen this or heard this process. If they put together this SQ3R process, they are going to better understand the material that’s in front of them.
When you’re doing a survey, look at the cover. Read the cover. What’s the title of the book? That gives you a lot of information. Look at the back of the book. They typically put an abstract of some sort. You get to learn a little bit about the author, what they have studied, what their interests are. There may be some testimonials that may guide you. Next, open up the book, find the table of contents. Table of contents will kind of give you an idea of the structure of the book.
You also want to skim the introduction. Flip to the introduction, skim it over, see what’s going on in the introduction. From there, you can start looking at the chapter. When you’re looking at a chapter, chapters typically have the same structure, over and over. What does the structure look like? Look for an introduction. Do they have learning objectives? If you’re dealing with a textbook, they have specific objectives that they’re trying to hit. They’ll tell it to you right up front. You may have to hunt out the purpose.
Look at the use of headings, subheadings, how they’re identifying that. Summaries that they may have at the end of the chapter, any end of chapter questions, all that information gives you a feel for how the book works. In addition, you’re going to look for a glossary. You’re going to look for an index. As you’re looking through the different pages, you’re just flipping through pages, look for visual objects, such as images, charts, maps, diagram, anything that can help better explain what’s in the book.
Then, also, look how keywords or key vocabulary are being identified. Are they bolded? How do they pop that out? Sometimes you have callout, which are different blocks that are pulled out. All this tells you about how a book is structured. While doing this survey, also consider what you already know about that topic. That’s activating prior knowledge. Think about, “Okay, I’ve heard about this topic before. What do I already know about this topic?” You’re trying to make those connections. That is surveying the book. That’s step one.
Next step is questioning. You’re basically going to set up a system to help you focus on what you’re going to be reading, but it’s also going to serve as your review system. This is how this works. It’s pretty easy. What you’re going to do is you’re going to turn the titles and headings and subheadings and keywords and key phrases into questions. You’ll pull out a key topic, one of the headings, and just flip into a question. How could you rewrite that into a question?
For example, this podcast episode, I tell you, SQ3R. Some of the questions that maybe I’m considering is, what is SQ3R? What are the five steps of SQ3R? How do I survey a book? How do I create questions? Why do I create questions? Those are types of questions that I would be writing down. I can create individual flashcards, so I can write one question on each flashcard. I could put them in my notebook, leaving space where I could answer those questions, or create a digital document where I can do that. Basically, you’re creating an information recall system. I talked about this in episode ITC: 81, on using items like flashcards to help you recall information.
You’re going to get down with surveying, then you’re going to specifically work to address questions. I would just do one chapter at a time. I would focus on one chapter, outline the question, do it rather than try to go through the whole book. I would try to do that just one chapter at a time. After you have your questions, the next thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to go and read the book. You’re going to read the chapter. We’re going to focus on a chapter at a time. You read the chapter, and you are actively reading the chapter.
What I mean is, you are trying to answer the question you have created, as well as keep structure in mind that you developed in the survey. It’s a kind of two parts. You’re using those first two parts in order to help make sense of the chapter. You’re going to look for clues in opening paragraphs, opening sentences. Also, at the end of the chapters, where they’re doing the summaries, for pictures, keywords, everything. You’re taking this into consideration. During this time, you could also be taking note. You may be highlighting information in your book, you may be writing the notes separate, but basically you’re trying to answer those questions.
When you’re reading, you should read one section at a time or a paragraph at a time, and then take notes on that particular item. If you need to, add additional questions. You may need to create additional index cards of new questions that you’re coming up with as you’re doing this reading. When doing this, also if you’re taking a class, you may want to jut down questions that you would use in the classroom. I’m looking at this from a student’s perspectives. This is what you could be doing to guide your students on how to do this.
Basically, as a student who’s reading this, they’re trying to answer the questions, but they may also come up with other questions that they want to ask you in class. They should be encouraged to do that. When you finish reading the chapter, take time to summarize what you read. You can put this directly in the book, if you own the book, or a separate note.
That’s the first three steps; survey, question, reading. The next thing is to recite. You should do this step before you go to the next chapter.
Reciting is, you are going to look at the question, and then try to come up with the answer. You’re going to do this in your own words. You’re basically going to check for understanding that, when you look at this question, when somebody says, “What is SQ3R?” You’re able to tell them. Or, “What are the five steps of SQ3R?” You should be able to, in your own words, explain what those five steps are. If you have difficulty answering the question, you need to go back to the book and figure out what you need to do to summarize that point so you will remember it. You basically go through this recitation process until you can answer all those questions that you’ve created before you go on to the next chapter.
When you have successfully gotten through the reciting process, then you can go to review. Basically, with review, it’s kind of like recitation, that you are going to look at your notes and your note cards every couple of days, just to keep the information fresh in your mind. This will help with that long-term retention of information. Part of the review is go through your book, look at any notes that you wrote in your book, and then work through your question that you put on your note card.
If you answered incorrectly, you need to take more note in order to remember that. You just repeat this process. Because you keep adding chapters, you’re going to have more cards, more notes to go through. That will help that student get through that exam that you’re going to be putting in front of them later.
How can you teach this? Fortunately, the process is teachable. You can very much teach it to your students. Say, at the beginning of the term, you guide them through the process. Explain them what the process is, but then kind of coach them through the process. You can do this by creating worksheet. Have them do this where you can verify that they did this. You basically are leading them through the process in the beginning of the term.
Now, towards the end of the term, there should be an expectation that they know how to do this. Some of the research that I’ve seen it helps students be able to do the things that they need to remember that information for their class. It’s a very powerful strategy.
Other ways of doing this is, have students develop questions based on the chapter, and that ties back into those test pools that I’ve talked about previously. That students can use this process which is going to help them personally, and also, leverage it where they can help you develop questions for your test pool that you can use with students.
This also can be used in group discussions. Have students breakout into small groups and have them ask each other questions that they have created. Like I said, you can develop worksheet to help guide them through the process. With this, it allows them to practice this idea of active reading.
Students believe they are meeting the spirit and intent of a reading assignment when they passively read a chapter or article, but we know this is typically not true. That they’re not able to come back with the information that is essential to this, but we can build upon their knowledge when they actively read using this technique of SQ3R. Remember, that’s your survey in the chapter, you’re asking questions, they’re reading the chapter, they’re reciting the questions that they have come up with, and then finally, doing a regular review of that material. That will help them be better readers.
Speaking of reading, here’s a quick plug from my book, Read to Succeed.
