This book was incredibly eye-opening. Particularly, I identified a lot of my own reading problems. See, I love books, but I am a slow reader. What took my friends in school 15 minutes to read, took me 25. I became self-conscious and started to do "fake reading". Obviously, I didn't know I was doing something that had a term attached to it, I was just trying not to be embarrassed. In textbooks I would read the first and last section and one in the middle. This saved me time & I would fill the blanks on the sections I skipped by asking my friend or taking notes during discussions. When I discovered Cliff Notes, I don't think I read an assigned book for the rest of high school. I took excellent notes and paid close attention in class, so I still got good grades, but felt like I really missed out on the pleasure of wrestling with a classic novel or poem. Unfortunately, these habits followed me to college. Again, I paid close attention in class and took notes, but avoided actual reading. I hated that I had to re-read something 3 times when YouTube had an excellent lecture from a nice scholar kind enough to upload a 20 minute video and Google had extensive Cliff Note-esque websites. I don't exactly know where my reading went wrong. I loved majority of my teachers and honestly love school, but have been faking it til I make it for a very long time.
I think my struggles with reading speed/comprehension will make me a better teacher in the long run. Over the last year as upper division coursework doesn't allow room to fake it, I have had to struggle through my shortcomings and learn how to read again. I am very grateful to have gotten to read this book. I took away a lot of tips for my personal reading, which I think will ultimately help me model these practices for students.
In the Fix Up section I liked/utilize
1. Asking myself questions as I read
2. Write a reflection after a section or chapter.
3. Retell it...specifically to my toddler. He's not judging my comprehension and is excited to have dialogue with me. Also, I think Einstein said that if you can't teach something to a 5-year-old, then you don't totally understand it yourself. I also like to retell course work as I'm driving. I look crazy, I'm sure, but helps me organize my thoughts.
4. Adjusting my reading rate. I have been practicing speed reading to get through more faster, but also recognizing when I need to slow down and process as I read.
I think that the Why Teach Questioning sections on p. 86 was super helpful. It is another way to model critical reading of complex texts without giving up when we get stumped. Questioning while reading adds a lot of interaction and in my experience a question I jot down is usually addressed later on in the text.
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