Reading Strategies

This week in my American Literature class I realized how many students really do not read for comprehension even at the college level. At the beginning of class my teacher handed out a worksheet with a list of vocabulary words from the reading. I was shocked to discover how many of us had not even bothered to look up those words, especially since the text was written in the 1800s so the words were foreign to most of us. Our professor then had us break up into small groups and define those words in context with the work. Afterwards, I heard a few of the students saying how they actually understood more of the reading. I thought this was a great strategy the teacher used. We were all more aware of the fact that we need to look up things we do not know to improve our comprehension. I would like to hopefully incorporate this in my teaching as a wake up call to my students before they have a test!