Most students had heard the terms used by their teachers, but we needed to compare and contrast both so that they could understand how and when they could be used in research and reading. Students struggled to articulate their understanding of both when initially asked.
After establishing that little prior knowledge existed, we went on to show this video (please overlook some grammatical and spelling errors in this video, but I did not make it), pausing when necessary to clarify meaning or vocabulary. Some students demonstrated their understanding by paraphrasing in their own words that skimming was finding out the main idea, reading without a goal in mind, or what the text was about in general, whereas scanning was searching for specific information. All students agreed that both required quick reading to be done effectively.
Video taken from Youtube.
The video was effective in showing the difference between the two. Skim reading was compared to to window shopping (reading for an overview/shopping with no purpose or specific goal in mind). In contrast, scanning is more like ordering a pizza (reading for a specific purpose/ordering exact toppings to an order).
When the top of the flipchart was done, we practiced both skills. We looked at two pieces of text from Eating Well by Robyn Hardyman.
Image taken from Overdrive.com
For the skimming exercise, I asked the student what the main idea of the text was about. Many were able to summarise this well in one post-it, but a few did struggle with understanding what the main idea. Consequently, we reviewed how to look at paragraph headings, topic sentences and key words to understand the main idea better.
For the scanning exercise, I asked students to explain why fibre was important to their diet and health. This proved to be easier as they understood they had to search and read specifically for the keyword "fibre".
