Oftentimes, students will cruise through school with no apparent problems until they reach the 3rd or 4th grade, when suddenly their grades begin to drop and they may even lose interest in school. This is sometimes called the "Fourth Grade Slump". Studies have found that a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that, beginning in 3rd grade, students are expected to read much more nonfiction material than they have in the past, and they simply don't have as much experience with this genre of text. Third grade is also oftentimes the first time students have official "textbooks". As teachers, we can sometimes forget that students may simply not be familiar with how information in textbooks is organized. Spending some time at the beginning of school going over textbook organization can save you and the students a lot of potential confusion later on down the road.

The study strategy I'm about to share is called the "Survey Technique". It teaches students a systematic approach for previewing textbook chapters. As with all techniques, students will benefit from this only if it is heavily modeled and guided by the teacher before students are expected to do this independently. Here are the 6 steps to the Survey Technique:

1. Analysis of Chapter Title: Students read the title and discuss what they think the chapter will contain.
2. Analysis of Subtitles: The teacher notes the subtitles and the students turn the subtitles into questions.
3. Analysis of Visuals: The teacher and students analyze the visual aids of the chapter. The teacher asks questions to determine if the students can understand the information in the visuals.
4. Introductory Paragraphs: Students read the introductory paragraphs and decide how this information fits with the information discovered in the first three steps.
5. Concluding paragraphs.: Students read the final paragraphs to provide a summary of the chapter content BEFORE they read the entire chapter.
6. Deriving the Main Idea: The students develop a concise statement that could stand as the main idea of the chapter.

Notice that these steps occur as a discussion in either a small group or as a whole group BEFORE the chapter is ever read. This preparation makes the actual reading of the information in the chapter much easier for the students, since their brains have been "primed" for the material by the discussion. This technique works well to help students see the overall organization of textbook chapters and will therefore help them organize the chapter information better mentally.

~ Heather Wall