A+ Student

Strategies

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A+ Student Strategies for Reading & Thinking Critically

Do you want to know what it takes to get better grades? Do you want to be able to read more effectively?

Do you want to better analyze information?

This workshop will help you to read more efficiently and show you effective strategies to get the most out of what you read. You will also gain skills that will help you to think more effectively about the information you have read

and better expand on these ideas through your writing.

Agenda

• A+ Student Learning Metaphor • Model of A+ Student Learning

– Reading Effectively– Thinking Critically

A+ Student Learning Metaphor

The performance of a car does not depend on the horsepower of the car, but upon the skill with which the car is driven by the driver.

So, if learning is the horsepower of the car, then thinking is the skill with which that horsepower is used.

Learning is a potential. Thinking is an operating skill.

Adapted from Edward DeBono Thinking Course, p. 2

Your A+ Schema

A schema is a specific, well-documented,

and consistent plan.

People use schemata to organize current knowledge

and provide a framework for future understanding.

A schema (pl. schemata), in psychology and cognitive science, is a mental structure (prior knowledge) that represents some aspect of the world.

Personal Characteristics

• Your Learning Style• Your Experience• Your Attitude• Your Filter• Your Prior Knowledge• Your Learning Environment

WHAT YOU BRING TO THE LEARNING PROCESS

A+ Student Learning

Input Information to be learned

UnderstandingComprehending what you learned

AnalysisUsing what you learned

EvaluationJudging what you learned

OutputWhat you create from

what you learned

INPUT

INFORMATION TO BE LEARNED

The actual “text” &

purpose for reading

The Text• “The Assignment”• “The Reading”• “The Lecture”• “The Movie”• “The Conversation”

Reading Strategies Schema Activation

SurveySkimming

SQ3R & SQ5RReading Environment

Active ReadingEfficient Reading

WHAT IS YOUR

INPUT?

*CREATE A POSITIVE READING ENVIRONMENT*• Relatively free of interruptions (phone, email, TV, friends)• Free of distractions (noise, people watching, windows)• Study in the same place & time (routine)• Not too comfortable (easily fall asleep)• Choose a time when you are mentally alert

**INCREASE YOUR ATTENTION SPAN**• Set specific and manageable study goals • Read with a purpose • Read actively (create study aids)• Keep a distractions list • Varyyour reading• Take breaks• Approach assignment with a positive attitude

friends/family)

Survey

Objective: To get a solid overview of what need to learn.

What it does…Prepares your mental processing system.

Why do it?• Be better able to concentrate with a frame of reference.• Be better able to identify & locate important information.

Endstate…Better understanding/comprehension/retention of material

Survey Applied to Your Studies

• Periodically, review your learning contracts and/or your online course syllabi

• Keep a list of important terms and concepts• Skim any handouts• Read your assignments/questions before

you read your texts. • Use the SQ3R strategy when reading your

texts

5 step method that was designed to help people become more active in their reading and retain information more easily.

Survey Read intro, summary; skim headings, boldface, italicized words, charts, etc.

Question Identify your purpose for reading – assignment, paper, discussion, etc.

Read Break into sections, take notes as you read, make links back to your purpose

Recite Rewrite key information in your own words

Review Scan material; talk about it with classmate if possible; identify themes and relationships between concepts

SQ3R Textbook Study System

Research shows students who learn this system and use it conscientiously- read 22% faster

- comprehend 10% more - retain 80% of material.

Active Reading

Take Notes

Use a Pacer

Highlight Important

Information

Engage with the text

Efficient Reading

Break poor reading habits– Don’t sub-vocalize (pronounce) each word in your head

– Chunk words into concepts instead of reading word-by-word

– Soften your eyes and force yourself to scan faster

– Don’t re-read unnecessarily, use a pacer/pointer

– Avoid distractions to improve your concentration

– Read from top to bottom as well as left to right

Practice Your Skill - http://www.readingsoft.com/

Adapted from http://www.mindtools.com/speedrd

UNDERSTANDING

Making meaning as you read the “text”

What is “understanding”?• Knowing what needs to be known

and why/what will be done with the information

• Activated Schema

• “Thinking”

• Comprehending – Key Issues/ Main Points

• Summarizing in your own words

Strategies for how to get itReading and Decoding

Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy

COMPREHENDING WHAT YOU LEARNED

CREATE INTEREST• Set Goals:

•“What is my purpose for doing this reading?”•“What do I want to learn?”

• Look at lesson objectives • Learn new vocabulary • Preview the reading• Review introductory information

USE WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW• Activate prior knowledge (schema):

“What do I know about the topic?”

Comprehension TipsComprehension Tips

Think about how to best take notes

Reading & Decoding

College reading requires that you not only read and comprehend a subject, but that you also read for a specific purpose, analyze the material, and read between the lines.

3 levels of reading and decoding:• Decoding for meaning – using context clues• Reading for meaning – not word for word• Reading with a purpose – knowing what you are reading and

why you are reading it

Decoding for Meaning – Using context clues

Raining Cats and Dogs Belly Button

Decoding for Meaning – Using context clues

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht

oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter

by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Reading for Meaning – not word for word

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht

oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it

wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter

by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

According to a researcher at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human

mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

Reading for Meaning – not word for word

Bloom’s Taxonomy

EVALUATION – JUDGE – Do you have to appraise, assess or critiqueon a basis of specific standards and criteria?

SYNTHESIS – COMBINE – Do you need to take your own ideas and integrate them with course concepts into a product, plan or proposal? Can you identify what is relevant from what irrelevant?

ANALYSIS – CONNECT – Do you need to compare/contrast, distinguish, classify and relate any assumptions, hypotheses, evidence or structure of a statement or question?

APPLICATION - USE – Do you have to select, transfer or use data and principles to complete a problem or task?

COMPREHENSION – UNDERSTAND - Do you have to translate your understanding or interpretation of information?

KNOWLEDGE – REGURGITATE -- Do you have to recall or recognizes information? Do you have to present the ideas and principles that you learned in a basic summary?

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Bloom and a Real Life Example • Knowledge – What is it?• Comprehension – What else is it like?• Application – What does it do?• Analysis – How does it work?• Synthesis – What happens when you…?• Evaluation – How was the quality?

How you piece together the significance and organization

of the parts of the text

ANALYSIS

What is “analysis”• Identify the Elements, Relationships and

Organization of the “text”

• Know the Parts of the “text”

• Look for the relationships between ideas

• Interpretation

Strategies for how to do it Context Clues

Association with Schema Says/DoesOutlining

Graphic Organizing/MindmappingPTR2

USING WHAT YOU LEARNED

Restatement: Reading What a Text Says

Description: Describing What a Text Does

Interpretation: Analyzing What a Text Means

EXAMPLES of Ways to Read and Discuss TextFrom: www.criticalreading.com/ways_to_read.htm

Consider the following nursery rhyme... Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow,

and everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go.

What A Text Says talks about the topic of the original text, Mary and the lamb. Mary had a lamb that followed her everywhere.

What A Text Does talks about the story. The nursery rhyme describes a pet that followed its mistress everywhere.

What a Text Means talks about meaning within the story, here the idea of innocent devotion. An image of innocent devotion is conveyed by the story of a lamb's close connection to its mistress.

The devotion is emphasized by repetition that emphasizes the constancy of the lamb's actions ("everywhere"…"sure to go.") The notion of innocence is conveyed by the image of a young lamb, "white as snow." By making it seem that this connection between pet and mistress is natural and good, the nursery rhyme asserts innocent devotion as a positive relationship.

SAYS/DOES EXAMPLECopyright New York Times Company Aug 9, 2005

CONGRESS has an amazing new scheme to cut crime, automobile fatalities and energy consumption. There is one

hitch. We have to stay in bed until sunrise during the first week of November -- lights out, televisions and radios off and please

stay away from that coffee maker. Of course, doing so might interfere with breakfast, school

attendance, morning workouts and jobs. That's because during that week, the sun won't rise until 7:30 a.m. at the earliest. If

you live on the western edge of your time zone, expect darkness until 8:30 a.m. Sorry, Boise. Good night, Grand Rapids.

Congress has extended daylight saving time by four weeks: In 2007, our clocks will spring forward on the second Sunday of March and fall back on the first Sunday of November. And frankly, there may be another hitch or two in the plan. First, the trick of shifting unused morning light to evening was intended to exploit long summer days, when sunrise occurs between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Standard Time -- hours of daylight that do not exist during the short days of March and November. Second, after nearly 100 years, daylight saving has yet to save us anything. The idea of falsifying clocks was proposed by the British architect William Willett in 1907, but the Germans were the first to try it in 1916, hoping that it would help them conserve fuel during the First World War. Then Britain and America gave their clocks a whirl.

Helpful Hint: These should all be

descriptive words

Congress attempts

to influence

social problems

with change in timeChange in DLS is extended 4 weeks

and points

out problems

with original intent & current change

Helpful Hint: These should all be action words.

Intro to topic with

humorous

linkages to daily

impact of change in DLS.

Provides current state of affairs with & critique of the

change in DLS.

PTR2

roblem

hesis

easons

esults

PTRR

INTRO== BODY

= Conclusion

WHO'S GOING TO ARGUE WITH this outcome? Back in 1992 Shunta Belle was on the fast track to nowhere, "hanging around thugs and drug dealers and trying to prove myself to them." Then, as a freshman at Provine High School in Jackson, Miss., she signed up for the spit-and-shine, no-nonsense world of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. For the first year, Belle held on to a few of her underachieving civilian comrades. But over the next three years, she picked up new friends, a better attitude and a fresh set of goals to match. "I got serious about things," she says, "and I wanted to be around people who wanted something out of life." Today

Belle, 23, is a fire fighter in her hometown department.

It is stories like Belle's that have helped fuel the growth of JROTC. Started in 1916, JROTC established a beachhead at the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy in Norwich, Vt. Currently the program

can be found in some 3,000 public schools across the nation, and its Pentagon funding is expected to rise more than 50%, from $215 million last year to $326 million by 2004. JROTC has its best-known booster in Colin

Powell, who was a ROTC cadet as a student at City College of New York. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he decided that JROTC offered the best prescription for saving lost inner-city youths.

"Yes, I'll admit, the armed forces might get a youngster more inclined to enlist as a result of Junior ROTC. But society got a far greater payoff," Powell later wrote in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey. "Inner-

city kids, many from broken homes, found stability and role models in junior Rom They got a taste of discipline, the work ethic, and they experienced pride of membership in something healthier than a gang."

There are quite a few people, however, who believe that those success stories come at too high a price. After all, JROTC teaches kids how to act and think like soldiers before they are old enough to know their own mind. Critics argue that because such

programs are among the few sources of additional funding for some of the nation's neediest schools, they exploit poor kids by putting them on a military track, to the exclusion of other

options. The debate has heated up as a growing number of school districts have begun offering JROTC, while others in such cities as Oakland, Calif., and Chicago have scrapped conventional teaching methods to convert

some schools into public military academies.

One of the biggest selling points of JROTC to school districts is that its matching federal funds provide a cost-effective way to broaden a school's curriculum. But that's a claim opponents say masks many hidden expenses.

A recent study by the American Friends Service Committee argues, for example, that after school districts subsidize military instructors' salaries, renovate facilities to accommodate JROTC instruction and fork

over for mandated field trips, JROTC is usually pricier than conventional academic programs.

Problem

Thesis

Reasons

Are military programs in the inner-city public schools rescuing at-risk kids or pushing them to become soldiers?

R1

R1

How you judge the qualityand make decisions based

on the evidence, structure,and logic of the reading

EVALUATION

What it is• Assess merits of the argument• EFFECTIVENESS• Draw conclusions • Critique the structure, content,

or implications• Generate possible solutions• Look for logical fallacies

Strategies for how to do itOutlining

Graphic OrganizingPTR2

Interpretation of Intent/Facts

JUDGING WHAT YOU LEARNED

Concept mapping can be done for several purposes: • to generate ideas (brain storming, etc.). • to design a complex structure (long texts, large web sites, etc.); • to communicate complex ideas.• to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge• to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding.

Concept maps:• Show relationships between ideas.• Acts as a memory trigger.• Makes it easier to remember information. • Improves reading comprehension.• Unequaled tool for organizing information. • The act of organizing materials is studying.

The Benefits of Mind Mapping

WHAT TO G.O?

PARAGRAPHSLESSON

OBJECTIVES

LECTURE NOTES

CHAPTER

TEST REVIEW

ROUGH DRAFTS

BRAINSTORMING

What Can I

Graphically Organize

STUDY GROUPNOTES

TEXTBOOKCHAPTER

Differences Differences

Similarities

Object, Event or Person

Object, Event or Person

Differences Differences

Similarities

Object, Event or Person

Object, Event or Person

Supports organization of ideas Helps form logical arguments

Serves as reminder of audience and purpose

Persuasive Essay

Introduction State the facts

Give brief outline of argument to

follow

Tell why argument is reasonable

Address arguments of the other side

Summarize your argument

Title of Poemby

Author

Line 1

Line 2

Line 3

Line 4Line 5

Line 6

Line 7

Line 8

OUTPUT

What it is• Your Assignment

• Paper• Presentation• Quiz

• Adding to your schemaStrategies for how to do it

PrewritingOutlining

MindmappingRough Drafts

EditingAccepting a final draft

How you prove that you have successfully linked the important

course material with your own schema. You must show evidence of this through clear and well organized

writing.

WHAT YOU CREATE FROMWHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED

You Should Now Be Able To

• Understand what is expected of you• Know effective reading/studying strategies• Understand and use critical thinking skills• Make connections with personal schema

and new information• Demonstrate that you’ve acquired new

knowledge through clear writing, presentation, etc.

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Reading Efficiency Resources

READING TEXTS • Pre-Reading Strategies www.studygs.net/preread.htm • Critical Reading www.esc.edu/ESConline/Across_ESC/WritingResourceCenter.nsf/wholeshortlinks2/Academic+Reading • Studying Efficiently gwired.gwu.edu/counsel/asc/index.gw/Site_ID/46/Page_ID/14536/ • Textbook Reading Strategies academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/208.HTM • How to Study – Reading Resources www.howtostudy.org/resources_skill.php?id=10 • Dartmouth Academic Skills Center www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/success/reading.html • St. Louis University Reading Resource Center www.slu.edu/x14076.xml • Rochester Institute of Technology – Academic Support Center – On Textbook Reading

www.rit.edu/studentaffairs/asc/college_programs/lng_pwr/index.php?l1=3&l2=7&location=37 • James Cook University

– Reading Efficiency - http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/tld/learningskills/effreading/

MINDMAPPING• Theory Behind Concept Mapping

cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm • Mindmapping Overview members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/ • Reading Comprehension & Mindmapping Video www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvnbKEHOQIY&feature=related• University of Victoria www.coun.uvic.ca/learning/reading-skills/ • James Cook University

– Mindmapping - http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/tld/learningskills/mindmap/index.html

Characteristics of Strong Critical Thinkers(from Vincent Ruggiero, Beyond Feelings, A Guide to Critical Thinking):

• Critical Thinkers... "Are honest with themselves, acknowledging what they don't know, recognizing their limitations, and being watchful of their own errors."

• Critical Thinkers... "Regard problems and controversial issues as exciting challenges."

• Critical Thinkers... "Strive for understanding, keep curiosity alive, remain patient with complexity and ready to invest time to overcome confusion."

• Critical Thinkers... "Set aside personal preferences and base judgments on evidence, deferring judgment whenever evidence is insufficient. They revise judgments when new evidence reveals error."

• Critical Thinkers... "Are interested in other people's ideas, so are willing to read and listen attentively, even when they tend to disagree with the other person."

• Critical Thinkers... "Recognize that extreme views (whether conservative or liberal) are seldom correct, so they avoid them, practice fair-mindedness, and seek a balanced view."

• Critical Thinkers... "Practice restraint, controlling their feelings rather than being controlled by them, and thinking before acting."