How to Read, and Really Understand

The most powerful reading happens before the first word. Skilled readers warm up their minds by activating what they already know, so new ideas have somewhere to land.

Prepare your mind to receive

• Preview and predict. Scan headings, images and captions before reading a single sentence.
• KWL chart. Know, Want to know, Learned. A three-column organizer for your thoughts.
• Vocabulary preview. Look up five to ten key words before you start, especially in academic texts.
• Set a reading purpose. Decide why you are reading before you begin. It changes everything.

Reading through the ages

Reading grows with us. From the read-aloud years before age five, to cracking the code, to reading to learn, to critical and complex texts in our teens, each stage builds on the last. Adulthood brings academic and professional reading, and then the richest stage of all: lifelong reading, chosen for curiosity and joy.

What the science says

Previewing a text can boost comprehension by as much as 40 percent. Without review, around 70 percent of new information fades within a day. Reading just 30 minutes a day exposes a reader to millions of words a year, and every new page brings a handful of new words to learn.

"Reading is the finest teacher of how to write."

Annie Proulx

Free literature and poetry online

Practice with the world's greatest writing, all free. Project Gutenberg offers more than 60,000 classic ebooks. Standard Ebooks reformats them with beautiful typography. The Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets hold thousands of poems, many with audio of poets reading their own work.

Adapted from the Library Literacy Hub at collettecurates.org.