Reading is a skill your teens have been working on for many years now, but as they prepare for college-level work, the reading load becomes heavier and more difficult. For some teens, the extra work is a welcome challenge, but slow readers may struggle to keep up. In fact, many students find that they are unable to finish their reading assignments in the allotted time-frame.
Here are some tips for helping slow readers succeed with college-level work.
Divide the Reading into Manageable Chunks
If your teen has hours and hours of reading to do, the easiest method is to break it up into shorter sessions of an hour or less. An easy way to figure out how much reading they actually have to do is to set a timer while your teen reads a page from the textbook at their own pace. Now multiply how many minutes it took for one page by how many pages have been assigned.
Once your student has a rough idea of how many hours of reading they have to complete, they can schedule short sessions throughout the day and the week.
Preview, Read, Review
Students should begin by skimming the chapter for headings, bold text, or the first lines of paragraphs. The preview will give them a basic idea of what the chapter will be about.
Next, teens should read carefully. When they have finished reading a section or paragraph, they should highlight or make note of important ideas, unfamiliar words, or points that need clarification. Suggest that your teens make a list of questions or observations in the margins of their notes so they will remember points to revisit as they review the material.
The review is similar to the preview. Students will skim the material, look up words they don’t understand, and answer the questions they’ve written down in the margins.
Read Out Loud
While reading out loud won’t make your teen a faster reader, it does wonders for comprehension, and all the reading in the world is useless without comprehension. Younger children read out loud to help with phonetics and simple understanding of sentence structure and word meanings, but older kids can use it too, especially for complicated texts. When students see and hear what they are trying to understand, it becomes clearer more quickly. Encourage your teen to find a quiet spot to read aloud to themselves, especially if they are having trouble understanding the material.
Give Your Teens Time
Slow readers don’t always have to learn to read faster. What they need is time to work through the above steps without feeling overwhelmed. One of the beautiful advantages of homeschooling is that your students are able to learn at their own pace, provided they aren’t overscheduled or rushed. Help your teens succeed in their studies with strategies that will encourage them to read thoughtfully for maximum understanding.
You’ll find that these tips will help your teen to not only read better, but comprehend deeper and score better on their college-level work, especially their CLEP and DSST exams.
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