Entry #2: What Happens When I'm Forced to Slow Down

I am the queen of power reading. If you haven't heard that term before, it's because it is one of my own creation. Power reading is my tactic for getting through all the required readings for grad school: you collect all the texts you need to read for the week, find a stretch of free time, get into a comfy chair or climb onto the treadmill (depends on how motivated you are feeling), and read straight through all the texts until you are done.

If that sounds horrible, it kind of is. But it's effective. I can power read through all my readings in a couple of hours and then focus wholly on the assignments related to the readings. 

However, power reading doesn't allow me to interact with the text or really dig deep. I mean, sometimes, all the text blurs together, and while I can tell you about the key topics of what I read, I cannot provide any real details. 

The SQ4R strategy made me slow down. Like drastically. I spent probably over an hour interacting with an article that normally would take me half that time. And in slowing down, I saw a lot more in the text. I saw recurring themes - such as educational inequality and the ineffectiveness of the Common Core State Standards - and made connections with other texts (Kucer, 2015) - particularly Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius (2020). Normally, I am so focused on getting the words into my brain that I do not see these themes or connections. 

When it came time to answer questions about the text, I already had a list of insights I could use. The notes I had taken saved me a lot of time (though I still can't say this whole process was faster in the long run). I didn't have to reread sections and try to rack my brain for what I thought as I was reading (if I was thinking anything at all...). My thoughts were right on the page, next to the important lines. Furthermore, when I began responding to peers, I realized that I remembered a lot more of the article than I normally would have. In fact, I even remembered some of the thoughts I had while reading - without looking at my notes. That is not something that happens to me often; I've got too many things going on in my head and very rarely are they my own thoughts (which sounds sad when I write it down...). In the places when my classmates mentioned something I didn't remember of the top of my head, I was able to look back and see my thoughts from when I was reading the article. This allowed for an answer based on my actual thoughts at the time, rather than what I thought my thoughts were, swayed by others' writing. (I probably could have fit the word "thought" in there another time, but my brain might have exploded.)

Moving forward, I can't say I will use this strategy with every text I have to read for grad school; I just don't have the time to do that. However, I might spend some time after reading each text to write down some of my overall thoughts and circle some of the key vocabulary. Stopping after a reading rather than continuing on my power reading quest and gathering my thoughts might do some actual good. After all, doing so will force me to truly think about what I read, the themes I saw, and the connections I made. Additionally, it will prepare me for responding to classmates without requiring me to go back and reread the whole article to come up with some thoughts that I may or may not have had when I read it the first time. I can also see how this would be a good strategy to teach my students. I can see how it could make a difficult text more approachable and overall more comprehensible. 

[This post was updated January 27, 2022 at 11:30 AM]

References

Kucer, S. (2015) "Literacy: Varied, Dynamic, and Multidimensional," Journal of Family Strengths: Vol. 15: Iss. 2, Article 1.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. New York, NY: Scholastic.