How To Apply The 5 Steps Of FLIRT To College Reading

As a college student you are regularly assigned to read designated chapters for that particular course. Reading multiple books from different classes can be somewhat difficult and confusing. Applying the FLIRT system before you read can really help you understand the text. Here are the five steps to becoming a successful reader:


Find The Form: Preview the text to determine the genre demands and establish your reading behaviors. (Example: non-fiction, fiction, poetry, etc.)

Look At The Text Features: Skim the text features to create interest and identify essential themes.

Identify Connections: Make connections to determine what you already know about the topic and identify difficult sections.

Reveal The Purpose: Ask questions to set a purpose and to anticipate the author’s point of view.

Transfer To Organizer: Scan for transition words to determine the external structure and establish a system for organizing new information.

In conclusion, FLIRTing with the text is a great way to become familiar with the reading for a better and complete understanding. By following these guidelines you are guaranteed satisfaction in understanding the whole text.

This was a guest blog by colleget student, Adrien Pagan. I would love to hear your secrets for preparing your mind to read. Share your thoughts below or join the conversation on facebook.com/myreadingsecrets If you liked this post, sign up for my newsletter for more tips to become a better student.

Digital Portfolios

Are you looking for ways to teach students how to use digital portfolios? This video by Central York High School art teacher, Katlyn Wolfgang is just what you need. I can't wait to begin applying her suggestions and allow students to share their work with the world.


We would love to hear how you use digital portfolios in your classroom. Make sure to visit Katlyn's youtube channel for more videos.

3 Tips for Locating On-line Information

It's 6:08 am Sunday morning and I silently let my yellow lab, Maggie, outside to do her morning business. Before I know it, she is barking wildly and running across the lawn after a black animal. I am not concerned because our one neighbor has two black labs and our other neighbor has a black cat...so this morning run is a common event. I don't want Maggie to wake up my kids so I open the door to quietly bring Maggie back into the house when my sleepy eyes focus on the black SKUNK that is slowly turning around to spray Maggie right in the face.

"MAGGIE get over here right now!" I scream, but she reacted too late. Maggie runs to me sneezing and stinking of major skunk oil! My mind starts asking tons of questions, "Now what am I going to do? I have never had a dog that was sprayed by a skunk before. Should I use tomato juice? Do I need to take Maggie to the vet?"

I decided to do AN INTERNET SEARCH before I drove all the way to the grocery store to buy tomato juice. If you ever smelled skunk, then you know time is a factor for this search. I needed to find the right answers to my questions as fast as I could.

1. Use quotes - I needed to know the best shampoo solution to remove skunk smell so I used quotes to keep the search result focused on certain words in a certain order. I typed in, "how to remove skunk smell from dog" and received 7,000 results but without quotes the search received 64,000 results.

2. Cross check at least 3 sources - I then scanned my results to see if there were any results that had the same answer. Several listed hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. I clicked on the top result to see if the source was credible. Did they have experience removing skunk smell? My first result: 10 tips to remove skunk smell I clicked quickly to a similar result: Get Rid of Things My final result was a youtube video from a dog trainer.
All three results suggested hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap.

3. Use the word "and" or the "+" sign - Now I needed more information about how to get the skunk smell out of my house since I let Maggie into the house to do the Internet search. I kept the quotes around, "how to remove skunk smell from dog" and then used a "+" to link the word "house". This controlled my search results to include information for both my dog and my house.

The Internet can be wonderful if you know how to control your search results. Don't spend all day searching the Internet with nothing to show for your hard work. When you're proactive, you find the answers you need quickly and with little effort.

I would love to hear your secrets for locating on-line information. Share your thoughts below or join the conversation on facebook.com/myreadingsecrets If you liked this post, sign up for my newsletter for more tips to become a better student.

PS - The solution worked. Maggie and my house no longer smell like a skunk. Thank you to all those wonderful people who shared their knowledge through the world wide web!