READING TO LEARN
How to distinguish between fake news, knowledge, credible knowledge, and knowledge and opinion?
What skills would one need to try and dig deeper into the text?
Its good to have a conversation with the author while reading any text. This can be done by adding your notes or scribbles while reading. This is a good way to reflect on the text.
Taking inferences becomes very easy while using this process.
Every text(especially big ones) has a pattern/structure that it usually follows. Identifying this pattern before reading the text makes it easier to draw out connections.
Making connections to oneself, another text or the world is a good way of understanding the context of the text. This also brings clarity and better understanding.
Predicting, visualising and asking questions when reading a text is beneficial during the process of concept building.
When reading fictional texts, it's important to realise the thoughts and intentions of the author before extracting information. It's very important to understand that the thoughts and beliefs of the author can never ever be considered as a fact.
Facts are purely based on experimentally proven data. That being said, if the data changes, then the fact changes as all. So, therefore it's wrong to assume that facts are absolute.
Opinions on the other hand can easily be identified by looking for pronouns. As they are personal in nature, they are also in a way unique to each person and can be open for interpretation.
When trying to distinguish between credible knowledge and fake knowledge, it's important to try and search the source of any knowledge. If the source is say from a well-known scientific journal or study, then it can be trusted. But if the source itself is not clear, then it's safe to say that the knowledge was manipulated by the author's personal belief.
Informational texts by themselves are fact-driven and almost all content can be connected to a credible source. As mostly facts are presented, there is nothing really to infer or judge.
How to filter out credible knowledge from "toxic" knowledge in the Internet is an excellent skill to know during these current times. As most of the students use sites like Youtube to learn, it's important to understand which source to trust.
MY LEARNING
Learning to read is more output focused. Understanding the language is given priority and this mostly happens during primary years.
Reading to learn is more focused in building knowledge or developing a skill. Academic literacy does not matter much.
It is important to learn to read to read to learn :) This provides a direct relationship on the interdependence of both the skills.
"Purpose" of reading is very important. One must be clear on why they want to read that particular text and must have a goal in mind, whatever it may be.
Developing the ability to comprehend multiple texts is also a very crucial skill to have. As texts come in different types, we must not favour only a select few text-types but should be open to all. Selecting specific texts does not widen our scope of gaining knowledge.
MY IDEAS
I do not think initiating a very complex reading strategy that includes contextual and character analysis is necessary in the early years.This is because during the ages of 12 and below, children would not have developed a mature mind that is required to tackle such problems.
However, making children understand the importance of reading to learn might not be such a difficult task. If we can trigger their ability to start questioning information from an early age, this might develop their curiosity immensely and will help them in their journey to become life-long learners.
Why aren't children motivated to read? There are 2 main reasons. First, instead of being driven towards the book, they are forced to drive towards it. The natural curiosity is completely destroyed. If a child's motivation to read a particular text is to get good grades rather than good knowledge, no matter what anyone says, that child will never "learn" anything.
The second reason is that they judge the book by it's cover (pun intended). Because they are always given books for academic purposes (except if the child is whole- heartedly interested in the subject), they automatically assume every book to be textbook style. This does not help in inculcating a good reading habit and as Mr KP Mohanan said, they end up never picking up a good fiction/non-fiction book their entire lives.