Integrated Skills

Objectives
Student will be able to:
  • apply a range of comprehension strategies to textbook passages.

Introduction
You can improve your reading comprehension by incorporating a variety of active comprehension strategies. Some of these strategies are used before, others during, and some after reading. Developing competency in these strategies at each phase of reading will enhance your reading comprehension. One of the most effective strategies, known as SQ3R, uses these five steps: survey, question, read, recite, and review.
 
Before Reading Strategies
  1. Survey the text to determine how it is organized. Look at text features such as chapters titles, headings, steps, and illustrations. This is the first step in the comprehension strategy SQ3R.
  2. Organize your understanding by writing down three questions that you would like to have answered after reading. This is the second step in SQ3R.
  3. Create a KWL chart that has three columns. The three columns answer the questions of: What do I know, What do I want to know, and What did I learn. Fill in the first two columns for know and want.
During Reading Strategies

  1. Reading the text is the first R in SQ3R. You should read one section at a time. You might need to reread and reduce your speed of reading based on the difficulty of the text.
  2. If the book is yours, marking the text will help you to identify main ideas, details, and vocabulary. You can use highlighting, underlining, or circling. If you can't mark the text, then use colored sticky notes to indicate these features. 
  3. After reading a section, recite aloud questions or summarize what you have read.
  4. While reading, make predictions about what will happen in the next chapter.
  5. Make connections while reading. These connections will be to other texts, to your personal experiences, or to your understanding of social and historical events.
After Reading Strategies
  1. Review three questions that you made before reading. Were they answered? This is the third R in SQ3R.
  2. Write a summary of the text and paraphrase what you have read and define key vocabulary.
  3. Complete the third column of the KWL chart.
  4. Develop an outline or note cards of the important information and key words.
  5. Write down questions that you might use in researching the same topic later.

Using a combination of these strategies should help you whenever you are reading and studying.


Examples
Read the adapted excerpt of the table of contents from the textbook A General History for Colleges and High Schools by P. V. N. Myers, and then answer the question that follows.


1.
How has the author organized the textbook?
 

By surveying the table of contents, you can see that the author has divided up the information by historical times and then subdivided by country or event. This textbook actually does not need to be read chronologically. A reader could begin with a specific country or time period.


Now read an adapted excerpt of the preface from the textbook, and then answer the question that follows.



2.
What do you think is the main subject of the passage? Write your answer in the space below.
 

When you surveyed the passage, did you look at the headings? Did you turn those headings into questions? Did you quickly look at the introductory and concluding sentences of the paragraphs? You might have started thinking about what you already know about this subject and what you might want to learn. If you did these activities, you were using the first step in SQ3R.
 
The following are possible student responses after surveying the passage. 
  • history throughout the ages
  • history from ancient to contemporary periods


Try Together
Now, using the reading comprehension strategies that you have learned about, let's answer a few more questions about the passage.
1.
Which conclusion could you draw about history after reading this passage? Circle your answer.
a. The Greeks had the biggest influence on culture.
b. Throughout history there have been different kinds of conflicts
c.

Modern History has been marked by political conflict between nations.
d. There is little known about history, culture, and the peoples in Africa and Southeast Asia.
 
b. Throughout history there have been different kinds of conflicts.
 

2.
Which question might a reader ask about history after reading the passage? Circle your answer.
a. What are the divisions of history?
b. What years did the Dark Ages span?
c. Which period saw the revival of inventions and learning?
d. Why were the Crusades a remarkable undertaking?
 
d. Why were the Crusades a remarkable undertaking?
 

3.
Paraphrase in your own words the meaning of the Reformation.
 

Student responses may vary. Acceptable answers include:

  • The period from the 1600s to approximately 1750 was the Reformation, during which there were great religious conflicts.
  • The Reformation took place from the 1600s to about 1750. During this time many great religious conflicts to place.
 

4.

Write a short summary of the passage.
 
World history can be divided up into different eras with each era having its own cultural, economic, and political information.
 

Please evaluate the student's answers:

Excellent

Good

Okay
 

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PART I. ANCIENT HISTORY
SECTION I. THE EASTERN NATIONS
   I.  Egypt
   II. Assyria
  
SECTION II. GRECIAN HISTORY
   III. Graeco-Persian Wars
   IV. Peloponnesian War
   V.  Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting
   VI. Literature
 
SECTION III. ROMAN HISTORY
   VII.  Punic Wars
   VIII. Roman Empire
   IX.   Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire     
 
PART II. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY

This selection is not copyrighted in the US.

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     This volume illuminates Ancient, Medieval and Modern History. The book is constructed upon the same lines as my earlier works. In elucidating a wide range of facts, and tracing so many historic movements, I cannot hope that I have always avoided falling into error. I have taken the utmost care to verify and vet statements of fact, and to give the most current and reliable results of discovery and criticism.
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
     We have not discovered the exact time when man first walked the earth. Archaeologists have many times claimed to know that date, but significant discoveries have altered the date myriad times. We know that, in antiquity, when both the climate and the outline of Europe were extremely different from what they are at present, man lived on that continent with animals which are now extinct. As early as 4000 or 3000 B.C., when the curtain first rises on history, in the Valley of the Nile, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, possessing languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth through long periods of time before written history begins.
 
DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT
     The fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman empire in the West (A.D. 476) can be divided into two distinct periods that are markedly discrete. The conflicts, culture, politics, and economics of these two disparate ages are extreme. The ages are the Middle Ages, the period between the fall of Rome and the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and the Modern Age, which extends from the latter event to the present. The Middle Ages are further subdivided into two periods, the Dark Ages and Age of Revival. The Modern Age also is also segmented into two divisions, the Protestant Reformation, and Political Revolution.
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERIODS
     The Dark Ages encompass the years between the fall of Rome in the fifth century and the advent of the Renaissance in the eleventh century. The period was characterized by the beginnings of peoples and languages and institutions. During this time the Papacy and Feudalism rose as the dual power structure that reigned throughout the middle ages.
     The Age of Revival, more commonly known as the Renaissance, began with the eleventh century, and ended with the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492. During all this time civilization was making slow but assured advances.
     The last century of the period was marked by a great revival of classical learning, the Renaissance, and culminated in mechanical and medical improvements, ground-breaking inventions and discoveries, which stirred men's minds.
     The Crusades, or Holy Wars, were the most remarkable and brutal battles undertaken in the name of God in the history of Christianity. The purpose of these wars was to recapture Jerusalem, the most holy place in Christian belief. Ironically, the most valuable knowledge gained from the crusades was the medical knowledge of the Arabian people.
     The Reformation encompasses the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. The period is characterized by Martin Luther's break with the Catholic church which sparked the tremendous and unending struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism. Almost all the wars of the period were based on the finer aspects of religious belief systems. The last great theological combat was the Thirty Years' War in Germany. After this date disputes and wars between parties and nations were political rather than religious.
     The Era of Political Revolution extends from the Peace of Westphalia to the present. This age is marked by great conflict between despotic and democratic principles of government, resulting in the triumph of democratic ideals. The central event of the Revolutionary period is the French Revolution of 1789.

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