Designing Study Guides and Vocabulary Activities

Identify key vocabulary and concepts in the reading selection. List the vocabulary words in one column and a short phrase that illustrates the concept or a short definition. Students can do a matching activity after reading the passage to check for understanding.

In an activity called List-Group-Label, have students develop a list of words or expressions based on the textbook reading. Record 25-30 words and group them according to the concepts they represent, labeling each category.

Have students create "Possible Sentences" (Moore & Moore, 1992) to learn word meanings and to predict ideas. Identify key vocabulary and have each student construct sentences for at least two of the words. Record these sentences on the board or on chart paper, underlining the important words. Continue to elicit sentences from students as long as the sentences are creating new contexts. Then have them read their textbook to verify the accuracy of the sentences they constructed.

Identify the pattern of exposition of the reading selection. Devise a series of questions that guide students' attention to the pattern(s) in the text. Use questions at the literal, inferential or applied, and critical thinking levels. For example, with a cause and effect pattern, state some effects and ask students to identify the causes, or scramble the events or facts and have students classify them into "Causes" and "Effects" columns.

Have students outline the content. Based on the outline, have students write brief explanations or definitions of a concept in their own words. Then have students write short narratives to elaborate on the outline. This can be done in a jigsaw activity, with groups of students responsible for a paragraph or two of a longer narrative.

Identify the types of paragraphs used to develop the concepts and information contained in a selection. When students undertake this task, they learn writing skills as well as reading comprehension strategies. Paragraph type identification helps them focus on the author's purpose, the organization of the information and ideas, and the difference between generalizations and conclusions and supporting detail.

The purpose of a reading guide is to organize and condense material from a textbook to enhance comprehension and for use as study guides and class notes, where lecture notes can be correlated to textbook information.

1. Direct students' attention to the Table of Contents. What does it tell about the textbook chapter? What are the main ideas or points covered in the chapter? How many are there? Are there subtopics or sections under each main idea? What are they? Focus on the chapter title. How does it prepare students to read the chapter with enhanced meaning? Have students formulate two or three questions about the reading based on the title.

2. Where is the main idea (thesis) of the chapter located. Have students identify section, page and paragraph. What are the section headings or subtitles?

3. After identifying the main idea (thesis), have students read the chapter summary. Have students locate points in the chapter where the ideas from the chapter summary are addressed. This could be a sentence by sentence analysis if the summary is well organized and compact.

4. Have students locate and read or write out in outline form, the topic sentence of each paragraph and the concluding sentence. Remember that the concluding sentence may not be the last sentence, since often the last sentence is a transitional sentence to the ideas presented in the next paragraph. Based on this analysis, students identify the type or purpose of each paragraph.

5. Focus on a single paragraph or a few important paragraphs and have students locate the main idea and supporting details. Write these in outline form. This is a good exercise to jigsaw, with different groups of students or individuals within a group working on different paragraphs to complete a full outline of the chapter.

6. Based on the reading guides they produce, have students write their own summary of the chapter. Adjust this activity according to the language proficiency levels and writing abilities of L2 learners so that the linguistic and cognitive demands of the task are challenging but not frustrating for the students.

Moore, D. W. & Moore, S. A. (1992). Possible sentences: An update. In E. K. Dishner, J. E. Readence, T. Bean, & D. W. Moore (Eds.) Reading in the content areas: Improving classroom instruction (3rd ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt.

Roe, B.D.; Stoodt, B.D., & Burns, P.C. (1987). Secondary School Reading Instruction: The Content Areas. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Snow, M. (1993). LEAP: Learning English-For-Academic-Purposes. Los Angeles, CA: CSU Los Angeles.

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