SIP means SKIM, IDENTIFY VOCABULARY and PREDICT.
Skim means you scan the page. You don't need to read all the words. You make a list of the headings and sub-titles. You look at all the pictures.
Identify Vocabulary means you look for hard words. Often they are out in a box or bolded. You write them down and find what they mean.
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| William and Maza skimming an article. |
Finally, you write questions. You can use: "I wonder....?" and "I'm curious about..." The questions are about the article before you read it.
We had to say if we thought this was helpful (using SIP before we read something.) We used a scale of 1 to 10. One means "it stinks. It's not helpful at all." Ten means "This is excellent and really helpful for me!"
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| Dom checking out the vocabulary as he "sips." |
Maza agrees that this approach is a "7." It is pretty helpful. Dom feels that it is about a 10. He finds it very helpful.
William feels it is closer to a "5" because he feels that he doesn't really need to stop and find vocabulary. "I prefer looking it up in a dictionary or google or sometimes the article just gives the meaning."
The reason we learned SIP was to give us a new or better way to understand what we are reading. Now we can actually look for headings and question things as we go along in a reading. We can try to guess what it's about and then see if we are right.
