Age Group:
Elementary School
Middle School
High School

How do you use this reading approach?
The problem/solution approach is a wonderful method to help kids navigate that sea of relevant and irrelevant information that constitutes most reading. The premise is simple: In most readings there's a very limited amount of information that the teacher is looking for the student to acquire. Often teachers will assign questions to be answered or the text will have questions at the end. This is almost always true for the sciences. Reading the questions at the end of the chapter or the questions assigned by the teacher, is the best way to find out what is considered important by the powers that be and are guides for the reading. To use this approach, do not have your child skim or start at the beginning of the text, but have them flip to the end and start with the problems or questions that they are asked to find the answers to. They read the first question or problem, then work backwards into the text to find the answers by looking for key sight words. When they find a paragraph that they believe has the answers, they read the paragraph before and after to get an overview. They then answer the question, move on to the next question, and repeat the process.

Other important information:
This approach can also be used with the non-linear skimming method. After answering all the questions, have your child do a broad skim (introduction and conclusion). Moreover, you can replicate this method even if specific questions are not assigned to the class. Simply approach your child? teacher and ask for some guiding questions your child should look to answer with any given reading. Use these questions as problems and then search for their solutions.

The above information was written by Jonathan Mooney.