ITEMcon18

One of the most difficult parts of the research process for many students is the exploration stage: reading and understanding informational texts. Even though our students have “learned to read,” we should not assume they know how to “read to learn.” Students have difficulty with comprehension because they are encountering new content, advanced vocabulary, and unfamiliar text structures. They will often feel frustrated and resort to copying and pasting without understanding the content. In this session, we will explore features available within many databases (we'll focus on popular ELM databases to which we all have access) that can aid with reading comprehension, including translation, listening, and reading level options. We will also discuss strategies we can use to teach students how to approach common informational text structures.