From now until the end of my schooling carreer, according to Mr. Allen, I will be able to ace all of my classes. What we learned in class this week that really caught my attention was the question of "how do you know if you know something?" Normally when I read an article or a book, I'll go through an entire page before realizing that I didn't understand any of it. In class the other day, we learned to take apart different elements from the work and try to gain some understanding of it. Whenever I come across an unfamiliar word, I'll normally glance over it. Although we all know this in the back of our minds, I finally realized that when you take the time to actually look up the word, it will be much more beneficial in the long run becuase it allows one to understand the article on a deeper level.
You know that you know something when you can repeat it back in your own words. We started discussing this is class and I thought that just by having awareness of what is going on would help to know something. However, you could be aware of something you are reading and still not understand it.When we can put something in our own words, we will truly be able to understand it. What really helps to do this is by taking unfamiliar words, and learning their definitions.
This makes me think about what I might be doing wrong when I read an atricle. If I just take the time to read something thouroughly and try to grasp the correct meaning of it, I will probably be able to improve my grades. I'm not a big believer of small things that can drastically change a persons grade because of my past experiences of struggling to improve my grade, but this seems to make a ton of sense. I will deffinatley test out this method throughout the course of this year and see if it helps my grade and understanding.
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ReplyDeleteBecca,
ReplyDeleteWhen you began explaining how many of us have trouble really learning something, I had a flashback of reading The Shadow Catcher. For example, I had read the same paragraph for 10 minutes straight one time without even remotely understanding what I had just read. Sometimes letters become bunched together and become blurred while your brain is thinking and communicating with something else entirely different than looking at the task at hand.
I realized that thinking about how we think is a very complex and different way of analyzing oneself and I appreciate you writing a blog about this because most do not take the time to think of the importance of a word that most would just blow over. I agree that it is a smart and beneficial move to actually take the time and look up that unknown term for ones greater understanding.