S urvey the material to be read.
  • Look at the section and paragraph headings to get an idea of what will be covered in the chapter. Look at side boxes and end-of-chapter activities to get additional information.
An example of surviving heading and subheadings.
C onnect the ideas.
  • Look at how the section and paragraph headings relate to each other.

  • Write down key words to show how the sections are connected.
Two sections of a book, with the question: How do the chapters relate?
R ead the material.
  • Read the information under each heading.

  • Pay attention to words and phrases that are in boldface or are italicized because these usually express important information about the heading.
Highlighted sections of a page.
O utline.
  • Write down the main ideas and supporting details in outline form.

  • Use your section and paragraph headings as main ideas, whenever possible. Also, the topic sentence, or first sentence of a paragraph, will often serve as a main idea.

  • List at least two details under each main idea.

  • You may want to list additional details under detail headings if you are studying for an objective test that will include many facts.
An outline of the material
L ook.
  • Look back at each chapter and paragraph heading and information under each.

  • Make sure that your outline contains all of this information.

  • If you have omitted information, add it.

  • If there are relationships between the sections that you want to note, draw arrows to show ideas that are related.
 Comparing the outline headings.

 

     

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