Helping Students Use Text Features

I am struck by how many students fail to notice and/or use the text features of their textbooks. These features (grammar, punctuation, fonts, graphics, side bars, design, etc) are important tools for aiding in comprehension. These are invisible to the students, but as a faculty member, you are the expert in reading your discipline specific texts, and you track these features to aid in your comprehension. Pointing out bold face terms, side bars, approaches to reading the graphics, review questions in the end of the chapter, key points built into the font color, size, and style, etc. are all clues to getting the most from the text book. In working with your text, here are some questions that can be asked of your classes:Did you notice how this text.....?What feature is given after , or __________ ? As in athe following example: A blepharospasm, or involuntary twitching of the eyelid, was his diagnosis. This sentence pattern signals a definition or synonym.How is the white space around the text given?Do the subsections have a hierarchy? What is it?How does knowing grammar help our reading comprehension?How is color used to draw your attention to information?What supplemental materials are available for additional study and practice?With a five-minute discussion at the beginning of each day, you can bring awareness to the students of the features in their texts that were placed there with thought and purpose. They can share how they read, make meaning and engage the text. This is a good use of class time, and the payoffs can be huge because you are engaging the classroom in an activity that fosters all four dimensions of reading: the personal, social, cognitive, and knowledge-building.