reading strategies

Playing with Paywalls: Information Literacy in Theory and Practice

Accessibility, Activities, critical thought and analysis, information literacy, reading strategies, research, secondary source research /

Arielle Bernstein & Chelsea L. Horne Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Increasingly, online publishers and distributors of information – news sites, popular magazines, professional blogs – have implemented paywalls to limit the number of articles to which the public has free access. This has traditionally been true for scholarly sources and databases, and prompts […]

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“Upstream” and “Lateral” Moves Through Information Networks

Activities, critical thought and analysis, information literacy, reading strategies, research, secondary source research /

Philip Longo Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Recent widespread concern over the spread of misinformation and disinformation has placed a renewed emphasis on information literacy skills in FYC courses. Traditional approaches often draw on student skepticism, asking them to analyze the credibility of a single source. But such skepticism-laden approaches risk adding to our

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Everything’s Biased: A Guide to Determining when Bias Matters

reading, reading strategies, Volume 5 /

Danielle DeRise Volume 5 Chapter Description The polarization of American society means almost every topic is ripe for controversy. Students in first year writing classes reflect this noisy information ecosystem, commonly, by focusing on the degree of bias an author displays. In some cases, these observations result in savvy choices about source credibility, but in

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Reading in Conversation: A Student’s Guide to Social Annotation

reading, reading strategies, Volume 5, writing technologies /

Michelle Sprouse Volume 5 Chapter Description Students are often encouraged to annotate while reading. However, annotation is often framed as an individual undertaking, a conversation between a reader and text. This chapter repositions annotation in the writing classroom as a social activity that can support students’ literacy development. Beginning with opportunities for students to reflect

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Writing About Writing (WAW) Synthesis Essay Assignment

Assignments, reading, reading strategies, secondary source research, Synthesis /

Jessica Jorgenson Borchert Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment comes out of my English 302: Advanced Composition course, a course that primarily services our English Education majors, and serves as an elective for all English majors and minors. Because of this audience, the assignment incorporates readings from Writing Spaces and/or Bad Ideas About

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Lobsters & Second Conversations: Addressing the “So What” in Your Writing

Activities, critical thought and analysis, reading, reading strategies, reading to write, rhetorical situation /

Stina Kasik Oakes Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description What’s a lobster? A second conversation? For years I worked to explain to students how to incorporate purpose, depth, and meaning into their writing with the terms “deeper meaning,” or “story under the story,” or “what the essay is really about.” But these phrases didn’t quite

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Effectively and Efficiently Reading the Credibility of Online Sources

reading, reading strategies, secondary source research, volume 4 /

Ellen Carillo & Alice Horning Volume 4 Chapter Description Because reading and writing are related interpretive practices, attending to critical reading is an important part of teaching writing. This chapter defines critical reading and offers students strategies for undertaking a specific kind of critical reading, namely reading for credibility, particularly of online sources. The chapter

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