In any one day we can do many different types of reading. You may glance at a newspaper, skimming the headlines to find out what has been going on in the world, or read the instructions for using a cleaning fluid carefully and in detail to make sure that you use it safely. At work, you may have to read reports and make decisions based on what you have read. Mostly, you will have worked out that you do not always have to read every word on every page - except when it matters. But how do you decide when you should read every word, and when a quick glance will do? Very probably, you will make this decision automatically from experience and practice. But this is a skill that children have to learn.

This unit will help your child to understand how and when to read in different ways. Using the right strategies will help them to read faster, more easily, and more effectively. At school, your child may be expected to do independent research for a topic or a lesson. This means that they will have to find and select information from a large number of sources - quite a difficult and scary task if you think that you will have stacks of reading to do! This unit should help to make it easier.

In this unit there is advice on when to preview a book or article before deciding which texts would be most useful for a task; when to skim-read a text to get a general idea of what the text is about; and when to scan for a specific piece of information. Students will be reassured to know that they only have to read in detail if they are studying a text in depth and need to think carefully about all of it.