Resources

Skill 3.1 Deciding Quickly if an Article is Useful

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity gives students the opportunity to practise quickly skim-reading a text to assess its usefulness.

A guided activity asks students to quickly browse through a scientific article and extract information such as its title, author and the subject of...

Skill 3.1 Skim Reading a Series of Articles

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, the aim of this activity is to set the scene for subsequent activities in this skill area. A series of brief articles is presented to the students who complete individual or group exercises to explore and develop their approach to reading text. The activity helps...

Skill 3.2 Deciding if an Article is Worth Reading in Detail

These activities, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, help students to look at a text, after an initial skim read, to judge if it is worth considering in more detail.

This ‘second glance’ activity serves several aims:
* It enables students to assess quickly what is the subject of the...

Skill 3.2 Information from an Article at 'First Glance'

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity enables students to learn about the basic structure and style of scientific articles. Students first test their ability to extract key information from informal or popular science articles. Initially, these are more accessible than research papers....

Skill 3.3 Deeper Into an Article at 'Second Glance'

This activity, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, enables students to develop their ability to gain a more detailed sense of the structure and subject matter of a scientific article. After completing the exercise, students should be able to: * locate the themes and keywords within an article *...

Skill 3.3 Understanding the Value of Titles

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity helps students to consider how useful and informative article titles are.

During the activity, students:
* browse a scientific article.
* look for information such as the author, publication date and content of the abstract.
*...

Skill 3.4 Making Sense of a Text

These activities, produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, help students to identify different sections in scientific texts which help to create an order and logical progression of the information conveyed. It encourages students to look at how the information is split into several principal types and...

Skill 3.4 What's in a Title

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity revisits the skim reading skills developed earlier in the series. It requires students to think about what makes a title useful and how to write titles themselves. Students consider what the purpose of a title is and why an author may write a catchy...

Skill 3.5 Identifying Different Types of Text

Produced by Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme, this activity helps students to further examine scientific texts.

Texts can be characterised according to the type of information or knowledge they deal with. There are different kinds of texts and they can be classified and sorted in various ways. This...