Locational skills

A group of reading skills that permit students to find a variety of written information from reference texts. Taught during the early elementary school years, locational skills include the ability to find specific words in an alphabetized list, to find specific pages from a table of contents or index, to find the pronunciation and meaning of words and phrases from dictionaries and glossaries, to obtain data from reference books and encyclopedias and to use classification systems to locate library materials. Ancillary skills developed with locational skills are the ability to evaluate and use various types of resources and reference aids, rapid-reading skills, and skills in organizing and converting collected data into a finished report.