Constitution Wordcloud Created in Wordle by T. Bowcut

The other day, I was talking to a group of students struggling through some very dense reading.  They understood why their professor assigned the text but they were a bit overwhelmed and wished the professor had gone over the text with them before they tried to read it so that they would know how to approach it.

We as instructors often forget that something that may seem basic to us may be out of reach for our students if we don’t provide some support–also known as “scaffolding.”  A great scaffolding technique is to use infographics as a prereading tool.

You may have seen an infographic on a news site after the president gives a State of the Union speech.  A common infographic is a word cloud that shows the frequency of word usage.  The more the word is used, the larger it appears in the word cloud demonstrating its importance in the text or speech.

Using an easy online infographic service, such as Wordle.net, and your classroom computer/projector setup, you can create an infographic that can be the foundation for a discussion about the text.

Ask students to scan the text and look for words that

  • Show up frequently
  • May be unfamiliar to them
  • Relate to previous readings
  • Are unexpected
  • May be missing

Using the infographic, you can ask them to make guesses about

  • The major ideas of the text
  • The meaning of unfamiliar words
  • How the text relates to previous reading
  • Why important words may be missing

We know from research that students are able more willing to grapple with difficult texts if they are trying to find answers.  Creating an infographic will help create questions to guide their reading and increase their comprehension.

CTLT Coordinator, Faculty Development, Julie-Ann McFann, Ph.D.

For Further Exploration:

CTLT’s Little Idea For Teaching: Pre-Reading Strategies/Using Infographics (written by Jennifer McDade)

Bandeen, H. M., & Sawin, J. E. (n.d). Encourage Students to Read Through the Use of Data Visualization. College Teaching, 60(1), 38-39. (Available online via Milner)