Teaching and Learning Resources

Critical reading is a strategy to read more intelligently, effectively and efficiently. Reading critically entails making judgments about how a text is argued in a highly reflective way that requires one to “stand back” and gain some distance from the reading. A form of “active learning” it is more intense than a typical surface reading, it often requires more than one read through to lead to a critical and deeper understanding of the content and ideas.

Strategies for critical reading include writing notes while reading, answering questions about the argument presented in the reading and reflecting on challenges to your own beliefs and values.
  

Related Resources

Critical Reading Strategies  describes seven strategies that can be easily learned and applied by your students in order to improve their reading effectiveness and invoke a deeper learning of the content. Critical reading - Literature Reviews is a guide on the literature review process. It offers useful tips and practices for critical reading that may be useful for teaching students critical reading skills. Teaching Critical Reading from York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies begins with suggestions on how to get your students to read and follows with strategies for teaching critical reading skills and an example of a critical reading assignment. Using Bloom's Taxonomy to teach critical reading  looks at how Bloom’s taxonomy can be used as an educational tool in teaching Critical Reading and offers strategies for each of Bloom’s five levels.