Skimming Reading Strategy Worksheets is a high-interest, skill-building resource that introduces students to the art of skimming—an essential strategy for efficient and purposeful reading. Through a series of imaginative and engaging procedural texts, students will practise identifying key ideas quickly, without needing to focus on every word. This resource is ideal for developing main idea recognition, summarisation skills, and reading fluency.

Designed with fun, fantasy-themed content, each worksheet challenges students to skim a short text based on quirky procedural topics such as training a pet dragon, caring for a unicorn, or building a time-travel machine. These creative prompts spark curiosity while reinforcing a serious comprehension strategy that supports more independent and efficient reading habits.

In each activity, students read the passage using a skimming approach—focusing on headings, bolded terms, and content words. They highlight key vocabulary and select the nine most important words or phrases that represent the main idea. These are recorded into a ‘jigsaw’ graphic organiser, helping students visualise and organise essential information. Finally, students use their nine words to write a brief summary of the text, demonstrating their comprehension and synthesis skills.

This structured format supports students in developing confidence with summarisation and main idea extraction, two foundational skills for upper primary literacy. While each worksheet is designed for independent or paired work, it can also be easily adapted for whole-class modelling using think-alouds or shared texts. Optional peer comparisons of keyword selections add an extra layer of reflection and discussion.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Practise the skimming strategy to identify key ideas quickly
• ✅ Extract and highlight essential information from procedural texts
• ✅ Organise and summarise key points using a graphic organiser
• ✅ Strengthen reading fluency and comprehension with purposeful practice

What’s Included:

• Imaginative skimming worksheets featuring fun procedural texts
• Jigsaw-style graphic organiser templates for recording key words
• Space for students to summarise the text based on selected words
• Teacher tips for introducing and modelling the strategy

Materials Needed:

• Printed worksheets
• Highlighters or coloured pencils
• Pencils or pens for summarising

How to Use:

• Begin by introducing the skimming strategy and its purpose in efficient reading.
• Model the process using a shared text, thinking aloud as you identify key words.
• Distribute worksheets and guide students through skimming their chosen text.
• Have students highlight key terms and complete the jigsaw graphic organiser.
• Students write a short summary using their selected words to demonstrate comprehension.

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Include in comprehension centres for strategy-specific practise
• 💡 Use as a guided reading task for practising main idea identification
• 💡 Extend by asking students to create their own procedural text to skim
• 💡 Pair students to compare and discuss keyword selections and summaries

Top Teacher Tips:

• 💛 Reinforce the difference between skimming and scanning with visual cues or posters
• 💛 Encourage students to highlight only the most essential content words—not everything!
• 💛 Use a timer for short skimming sprints to build fluency and confidence

Skimming Reading Strategy Worksheets provides a playful yet purposeful approach to building essential comprehension skills. With its creative texts and clear structure, it’s an ideal addition to any upper primary reading toolkit.