What You Read

An autobiography is a story that the author tells about his or her own life.

A type or category of literature. There are various ways of categorizing reading material; for example:
- by length - novel, short story, play
- by form - poem, legend, fable
- by subject - romance, mystery.

print friendly version

		Signs You're Reading
		Finding Your Tune
		Getting into the Story
		Finding Your Destination

Signs You’re Reading

You probably read a lot more than you think. Reading doesn’t just happen with books. Everything that you read is a text. Check out this video for examples of reading you might not even realize you’re doing!

What have you read in the last week? Think about reading you did at school, at home, at the library, on the bus, waiting in a doctor’s office or anywhere else.

Try keeping a journal to write down what you read every day. You might be surprised to learn how much reading you do!

What if I don’t read very much?
If you find that you are not reading enough, you can set goals to increase your reading. For example:

Read for 10 minutes after dinner every night.
Read one advertisement on the bus every morning.
Read one article in the Sunday newspaper every week.
Read one new genre or type of text every month.

Try setting a reading goal now.

My Goal:

Finding Your Tune

Choosing books and other reading materials you like can be hard sometimes. But the good news is that if you have a favourite type of music or movie, you probably have a favourite type of book, too.

Try these ideas to help you pick a book.

Read the front and back covers of the book to see what it will be about.

Look for authors whose books you have already read.

Look for new books in a series you enjoy.

Ask your friends and people in your family what they read.

Ask a librarian to help you find a book about one of your interests.

Try the book version of a movie you liked.

Read a couple of pages of the book before you buy it or check it out of the library—if it looks too difficult or you don’t like it, put it back.

Getting into the Story

Chances are some of the reading you do is stories. Another word for story is narrative. Narratives have the following characteristics:

a plot (a series of events). Sometimes the events are told out of order. For example, a character might remember an event that happened earlier. Or, there may be more than one plot going on at the same time

at least one main character

may be fictional (made up) or nonfictional (true)

include short stories, novels and autobiographies.

What are some things you do when you are reading a narrative?

Try to figure out the plot structure (how the events are ordered)?

Imagine what it would be like to be a character in the story?

Think about how the story relates to your own life and people you know?

These are all strategies for understanding and enjoying narratives.

What other strategies do you see in this video?

Finding Your Destination

You also have to read lots of things that are not told as stories. These kinds of texts are called non-narrative. Non-narrative texts have the following characteristics:

are not told as a story
do not have characters
usually give information
include cookbooks, technical manuals, dictionaries and maps.

Non-narrative texts may be only a sentence or paragraph of writing. Longer non-narrative texts can be organized in many different ways: according to topics, as a series of steps, or even alphabetical order (such as a dictionary or encyclopedia).

What are some things you do when you are reading non-narrative texts?

Try out the steps or information in the text to see if it works?

Think about how the information will help you or why it is important to know?

Take notes?

These are all strategies for understanding and using non-narrative texts.

What other strategies do you see in this video?

		Workshops
	I.What You Read	II.How You Read	III.Why You Read