Students listened to the in-class workshop onHow to Improve Reading and NoteTaking Skills. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, students should demonstrate “lower order thinking skills (remember, understand, apply)” by completing the following statements or questions.
1. Summarize what you learned in the workshop. Share any reading and note taking strategies or techniques that you heard for the first time.
2. What skills do you currently use in your daily reading?
Using the higher-order thinking skills of analyzing, evaluating, and creating, reflect upon your current learning and reading skills. Reflect on what has worked well for you. What steps can you take to improve your reading and recall? What steps do you plan to begin using to be a better reader?
Students may create their response by submitting
1.a written paper (a minimum of one and a half pages, Times New Roman 12 font),
2. an audio file (a minimum of 3 minutes) with a visual depiction (e.g. a concept map) on a separate file, or
4. a PPT slide presentation (a minimum of 10 slides).Each slide must have an accompanying written or oral explanation which is submitted separately. The written explanation must include sentence(s) for each slide or an audio file explanation of the slides).
Students will be graded on the detail of their responses and reflections. Students should give specific examples to support their written or oral statements.
The In-class Workshop Reflection
The in-class workshop on How to Improve Reading and Note-taking Skills was essential particularly in enhancing the study methods of students. By following the lower order thinking skills which require the student to remember, understand, and apply, scholars, will be able to formulate good study techniques that will help in improving their performance in the class. I learned several things in the workshop including new techniques of note-taking. First, when reading, a student should not only focus on the specific topic but also remember some past knowledge which relates to the reading. This enables the students to have a wide range of knowledge thus enhancing their understanding of the topic.
Additionally, students should focus on grasping the key points which are discussed in the context. Most of the learners read a book like it is a story thus understanding only a few of the main ideas. This also consumes a lot of time. Not all content is relevant to the topic, therefore, a student should focus on discovering the significant points and understanding them. This helps in activating the brains thus drawing the attention of the reader to the topic. Further, the factor of applying was also discussed which helped me in developing my reading skills. Short reading and point taking was a new strategy that I learned for reading and note-taking.
The reading skills which I currently use include continuous reading and taking notes after I finish reading, remembering past knowledge so that I can be able to evaluate my understanding of the topic, and generally reading through a book without taking notes as I believe that I can reserve the points in the mind. Although I have used these skills and techniques for a long time, the workshop helped me in formulating easy and simple strategies for reading. For instance, short reading and point taking thereafter combine all the points to develop a better understanding.
The best strategy that has always worked for me is reading the concept and taking notes after. However, this studying method requires a lot of time to synthesize the concept from the start to the end of the topic. Besides, the method hinders me from relating the ideas thus being unable to discover the main points. It sometimes leads to misinterpretation of information because of mixing the major ideas of different parts.
The steps which I will take to improve my reading will incorporate remembering past knowledge so that I can easily understand the current concept. Second, I will be dividing the reading into parts to have a clear understanding of the topics and easy derivation of main themes. Moreover, I will include evaluating the information so that I can avoid the irrelevant parts and go straight to the significant message. This will help improve my reading by allowing me to have more time to study.
The steps which I plan to begin with include short reading and noting important points, incorporating past knowledge of similar topics so that I can be able to synthesize information, and analyzing the reading materials so that I can save time. This will help me in generating meaningful ideas concerning the subjects, thus increasing my knowledge in the areas of study. As a result, my reading practices will be advanced hence enabling me to be a better reader.
