Exercise for While You Read

To "read actively," it helps to think of reading as a three-stage process:

• Before you read
• While you read
• After you have read.

There are important tasks at each stage. This worksheet focuses on the second stage: while you read.

Reading actively means:

• Making connections between your current knowledge and what you are reading
• Asking yourself questions as you read
• Paying attention to your internal dialogue with the author, in which you reflect on, postulate, and form opinions about, examine, and assess the author’s arguments. This ongoing commentary and analysis helps you, the reader, understand and focus on the text.

Highlight or mark key ideas and supporting examples or evidence on the pages; or, if you are using an e-reader or reading from someone else's book, take notes on separate paper or your computer.

Choose four main ideas from the text and record your feelings, interpretations and assessments.

Main Ideas in the Text	My Responses
1.	1.
2.	2.
3.	3.
4.	4.