Chapter 4 - Reading Strategy: Determining Importance

Good readers determine what is important in the reading.

Determining Importance Involves:
- Distinguishing between important information and interesting details to decide what to learn.
- Understanding how details help develop and support a larger topic.
- Merging purpose for reading, questions, and background knowledge to decide which information is important.

Reasons to Determine Importance
- In life, one continually makes decisions about what is important, setting priorities andselecting what must be done now and what can wait . . . what to notice on the CNN news screen, what to ignore . . . which dishes for Thanksgiving dinner to cook from scratch and which dishes to purchase already prepared at the grocery store.
- In reading, too, one must hone his or her skills of discriminating between what is important and what is not. Readers must practice making decisions about what is important in the text, not just do assignments for which the teacher has already determined what is important. The process of sifting through the information brings a deeper understanding.

What You Can Do
- As you read, pause and think about how you determine importance:
* The most important information seems to be . . .
* That is interesting, but what seems to be more important . . .
* This is important because . . .* I think the big idea here is . . .
- Give yourself a purpose for reading. For example, as you read an assignment, use small sticky notes to mark the three (or however many) points you think are most important in the piece.
- Ask what you will be expected to do with the information in your notes after you have finished reading. Will you discuss with a small group? Write a summary? Make a poster? Use the notes to review for a test?
- Compare your notes with peers’ notes and with your teacher’s ideas about what is important in the reading. Add any critical information that is missing from your notes.
- Notice the text features in the book for your course. Often the format of nonfiction text (boxed info, boldface ideas, etc.) alerts one to importance.

Chapter 4 Assignment
While reading chapter 4 (pages 66-83), determine importance. Think about what you have read in the book so far (not just chapter 4!) related to intolerance/prejudice, dreams/plans, and the characters.