Connecting what you already know to what you are trying to learn makes reading easier. If Chapter 7 is about the Battle of Lexington and Concord, readers need to recall what they know about the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party. To tap into their background knowledge, middle schoolers should survey the chapter for familiar ideas in titles, subheadings, illustrations, graphs and words in bold type. From there, they can begin to predict what they will read about next.
If students have already been given questions to answer, such as the ones at the end of the chapter, they should read them over before tackling the chapter. If they don’t have questions, they should try to make their own, based on what they have already seen in the survey. Questions will set a purpose for reading and guide the student in determining what’s important to remember from the chapter.
That chapter on the shot heard round the world or the one on Newton’s second law of motion is going to contain information needed to answers the questions, but it is also going to contain some details that aren’t as important. The reading part of SQ3R is done purposefully. The reader should carefully study passages that help answer the questions, then skim the rest, stopping only when they find details that help with answers.
“OK, what do I know?” That’s what the reader asks next. Without looking back in the chapter, the reader attempts to answer, orally or in writing, the questions. The reciting checks comprehension. It’s OK if the reader can’t answer every question. SQ3R isn’t a race to understanding, it’s a process for building meaning. This stage determines what the reader still needs to learn.
To review, the reader dives back into the text, rereading some parts, skimming other parts, looking for what they have missed. The process goes back and forth from reciting answers to rereading. The review continues until the reader can recite complete answers to all the questions. Even then, it might not end, because the student can continue to go over the text and questions as he prepares for related assignments, projects and assessments.