damon and pythias

Alexander is 8. Part of Alexander’s reading lesson today was this. We looked at a handout on the elements of three reading methods: scanning, skimming, and reading for details, and the last method tends to be his problem area.

The story was, “Damon and Pythias.” The plan was to apply each method to the Greek legend. I asked him five questions for the scanning method, which requires that a student look at the questions first before reading any of the story and then find the lines of the passage where the answers are located: (1) who is Damon (2) who is Pythias (3) who is Dionysius (4) what is Syracuse and (5) who almost died?

He got 100%. He read the entire story, two full pages, while I was explaining the three methods of reading!