Read the questions first. In the short passages, there will only be two to four questions (unlike six to ten on teh long passages), so you actually save time by reading the questions and looking for the answers in the passage.
Do not read the choices. Go straight into the passage and find the answers there. Since it's so short, you should not spend too much time on finding the sentence that the question is referring to.
After reading that section of the passage carefully, answer the best choice in the question. Use the process of elimination. Be careful not to interpret the passage outside of what it says. You should be able to find the answers by the information given in the passage.
If you are working with an SAT workbook, correct the answers and find out why you got a certain question wrong. For this section, I would recommend Critical Reading Workbooks from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and Barrons.