Have you been using Three-Close Reads in your classroom? We’ve revamped this strategy! The new Three-Step Reading process is more streamlined but will have the same great impact as before. Read on to see what’s new and what’s changed, and check out the new format in your favorite OER Project course.

As you’re settling into the flow of a new school year, laying the foundation of literacy is probably at the front of your mind. OER Project courses contain a variety of tools to help students build their literacy skills. For example, all our articles are available in a variety of Lexile levels and include audio versions as well. In this blog post, however, we’re going to focus on one of the most fundamental tools across OER Project courses.

In all OER Project courses, we’ve designed articles, graphic biographies, data investigations, and videos under the assumption that students will “read” each resource in three slightly different ways. As its name suggests, the Three-Step Reading (3SR) strategy encourages students to engage with text in three steps. The first step is a skim; the second is informational; and the third is conceptual, and encourages students to consider how the text connects to other texts and to the big narratives of the course. This doesn’t mean students will read each text three times, but rather that they will engage with each text in three steps. When these steps are combined, students will be able to understand the text more fully.

But literacy isn’t just reading words on a page, and articles aren’t the only “texts” students will encounter in OER Project courses. So, we’ve built a three-step tool that can be used to read articles, graphic biographies, and data sets—it’s even used as a strategy for “reading” videos. 

OER Project courses include a variety of videos in addition to articles. But, as you might have noticed, students sometimes tune out when the screen turns on. By approaching videos as another form of “text,” the 3SR method turns passive viewing into active learning. For example, we suggest that when you assign a video as part of a lesson, you start with a guiding question to focus students’ attention, and have them read the captions or video transcript as they watch. In addition to transcripts and captions, you’ll also see pause points in every video. These pause points align with important informational concepts in the second (While You Watch) step. The videos can be set to automatically pause at these key points so students can take a moment to contemplate and discuss, or to write a response to the embedded questions. Finally, students answer the questions in the After You Watch section to make connections between the content of the video and concepts from the lesson or unit.

Asking students to do three-step reading for a complex article or 10-minute video sounds relatively reasonable. But what about for a short, one-page comic? Don’t let the pictures fool you—graphic biographies might look fun and easy, but there’s a lot of information to unpack! Have you ever listened to Trevor Getz talk about teaching comics? If not, stop reading right now and go watch this video. Trevor explains how text, illustrations, and format blend together in these comics to create layers of meaning. These secondary sources are collaborations between a historian and an illustrator, so students need to also consider the intent of two different authors. This level of decoding requires students to build new reading skills that are different from those used for articles and videos. But it’s worth the effort. By using the 3SR for Graphic Biographies, your students will grow proficient at using these illustrated stories of individuals to support, extend, and challenge the narratives they encounter elsewhere in the course—and many of these individuals do challenge our large-frame narratives (but we don’t hold that against them). As with the 3SR Tool for articles and videos, students begin with a skim of the graphic biography to identify whom it’s about. In the second step, students focus on understanding the narrative of the comic and they also start to unpack the visual elements. Finally, in the third step, students place the stories of these individuals within the larger narratives of world history.

When students use our Three-Step Reading Tool for Data (last one, promise!), they’re not actually going to read many words. This tool focuses on the charts and graphs that students encounter in the data explorations that are part of the OER Project: Climate curriculum. But, of course, charts still need to be read in much the same way as other texts. In the first step, students quickly scan the charts to identify labels and variables. At the end of this step, students should have a general understanding of what the chart is measuring. In the second step, students focus on content—examining the arguments contained in the chart and how it presents the data. A set of questions accompanies each 3SR lesson plan. These questions guide your students (and maybe you) through difficult charts and point you toward any larger issues hiding in the data. In the third and final step, students focus on the broad issues that each chart helps us understand: Why is it significant? What predictions can it help you make about the future? Three-Step Reading for Data will help students get more comfortable reading charts, and it will help them become more proficient at evaluating the ways in which data is presented. After they’ve completed a few rounds of 3SR for Data, students will stop taking every chart at its word and be more critical of the people making them! 

We know what you’re thinking: your students are already going to grumble when you first introduce Three-Step Reading, so how are they going to react when you tell them there are four different tools for 3SR?! That’s like…12 steps! And maybe your students deserve a little payback. If you’re like us, Zoomer humor is perplexing, and TikTok is the sound a clock makes. To help them understand how helpful 3SR can be, ask your students to develop a 3SR for social media—for you. What tool can they create that will help you finally understand Kylie Jenner and K-pop stans?

Do you have tips for how to convince students to buy in to Three-Step Reading? Get inspired and inspire others by sharing your thoughts in the OER Project Community. Want to learn more about reading in OER Project courses? Check out our reading topic page and our Reading Guide.

About the authors

Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century. He is one of the historians working on the OER Project courses.

Bridgette Byrd O’Connor holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford and has taught the Big History Project and World History Project courses and AP US government and politics for the past 10 years at the high school level. She currently writes articles and activities for WHP and BHP. In addition, she has been a freelance writer and editor for the Crash Course World History and US History curricula.