I always ask for feedback from students after the first reading assignment. I ask what they think of the text. The feedback that I get tells me a lot about the skill levels in the group. I spend a lot of time going over study strategies in class and give as many strategies as I can, so as to support the greatest number of learning styles. If there is someone who is a disciplined student, I may have them share their process for working with the material. This usually starts a conversation among the students about the various strategies that they use. I start chapter discussions by asking how this chapter was compared to earlier chapters to get a sense of which chapters might contain the most "foreign" or difficult material for the students.