Category: Reflections

“Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run
You’ll be the prince, and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story, baby, just say yes”

Taylor Swift’s Love Story gave me the impression of Romeo and Juliet is a love story. The only other thing I knew about this play was that they both died at the end; the story is a tragedy. While watching Romeo and Juliet, I noticed that the romance was not only unnatural, but it felt forced. The union between Romeo and Juliet is a story about being blinded by love, rather than the story of love at first sight. In the movie, Juliet has to find a new person to avoid marrying Paris, conveniently, an unfamiliar face named Romeo appeared. It was as if the gods pitied her and aligned their paths. Not to mention the fact that Romeo was seeing Rosaline right before crossing paths with Juliet, these two “love birds” can’t be any more than blind. But the unfortunate union of these two from rival families couldn’t stop them from falling in love harder and harder for each other, despite not knowing what love even means.

Watching Romeo and Juliet made me realise that this story is intensely romanticised by pop culture. This was a story of hate, and how hate fuels love. Romeo’s “love” for Juliet was fueled by the hate that the Capulets and Montagues have on each other. The death of Tybalt was a domino effect fueled by Romeo’s hatred towards Tybalt’s action, not entirely towards his family (after all, he was married to Capulet’s daughter). At the end of the movie, the two families decide to hold hands and reconcile after Romeo and Juliet’s deaths. But reconciliation at the cost of their loved family members? I believe that this story doesn’t reflect the fact that love rules over hate, but that hate rules over love.

I found Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet entertaining. I was able to empathize with many of the characters, especially Mercutio, well respected by both houses and a well-liked witty and charismatic character that died tragically in a play fight. For me, Mercutio’s death was a big turning point in the story, his death led to an impulsive Romeo killing Tybalt, which then created a snowball effect that leaves both Romeo and Juliet dead. I am amazed by how Shakespeare was able to write this story more than 400 years ago and yet he is still able to make us greatly sympathize with some characters and keep us engaged in the plot. Shakespeare also made me generate many emotions such as envy, regret and sadness despite writing that story half a millennium ago.

The movie Romeo and Juliet that we watched in class did not make me sympathize towards the character due to the unrealistic aspects of the plot. I also do not feel this story represents the consequences of love. But instead exemplifies the consequences of obsession, which many people, similar to Romeo and Juliet suffer through in our society. Having deep affection for another or loving someone is considered as normal and heathy. Worrying for loved ones is also natural, although not to the point where one sacrifices their rationality. Once you forfeit your rationality an obsession is evident.

Both Romeo and Juliet take their lives because they can not live without each other. This is also a representation of what happens in our world. Obsessions can span from video games, to working out, to love. The one thing they all have in common is that once they are lost, everything else isn’t good enough. This leads to a spiral into depression, self punishment, or in this case suicide.

An example of this in the film is when Romeo was sent to exile, and Juliet was forced to marry a different man. To avoid this, she went to such extremes as to take an herb that stopped her heart for forty hours. This way the public would think of her as dead, all so she could stay with Romeo. This is an unrealistic scenario but is similar to the irrational behavior people display in real life when obsessed with the things they love. Nothing is good enough, so they do whatever is in their power to get it back. It is when they can’t that it impacts their life or will to live.

After watching the feature-length reenactment of Romeo and Juliet, I feel grateful for living in the twenty-first century, and pity for the deceased couple. They evidently had no one else to turn to when faced with their “death-marked love” beyond their parental figures and their unknowing friends, and they bottled up their ranging hormones and heated emotions so much that it literally killed them. I know I should feel heart-broken for Romeo and Juliet, but instead all I feel is pity.

I feel pity that they had no one to teach them about emotions and hormones and love; that no one truly knowledgable about their situation and whom they could ask for guidance existed in Verona. The only two people who could help Romeo and Juliet clearly couldn’t empathize with them; the Nurse told Juliet to take the safest path while Friar Laurence told her to take the most dangerous. Neither considered that there could be more desirable paths out there; paths that only true professionals of love and emotions could find: therapists.

I’m forever thankful that we, in the twenty-first century, have therapists. Therapists, full of wisdom and knowledge, study and work tirelessly to improve the emotional intelligence and health of others. They help us grieve safely to avoid taking revenge and letting our anger control us. They remind us when someone has clearly shown enough red flags that it’s time to move on, because there are always other fish in the sea (or in Juliette’s case, eligible bachelors in the city who are not double her age). And finally, they are honest with us and help us avoid making terrible, life-threatening decisions.

Being a teenager is the hardest part of everyone’s life due to heightened hormones and seemingly uncontrollable emotions, which only worsen when having a crush. (Compared to being in love, which in my opinion takes years and is almost always healthier than crushing on someone.) Yet, having a proper support system and people who will love you no matter what is essential to learn how to control emotions and survive this terrifying stage of existence. Thus, watching Romeo and Juliet reminded me to be thankful for the many supportive and knowledgable people in my life by illustrating what happens when teenagers have to deal with their hormones and emotions almost completely alone.

When we first began reading the book Brave New World, I’m not going to lie, it was horrible. The book made absolutely zero sense to me. The whole “Brave new world” was just a really strange thought to me, and it sounded terrible. Then, as the book progressed, we were slowly introduced to new characters. Characters like Lenina (although she was really annoying in my opinion) and Helmholtz added more depth to the story, which increased my interest. However, the part where I feel I really started liking the book was when Bernard was focused upon. Bernard was one of the stranger characters. From his strange personality, to his huge ego, learning more and more about him made the book more enjoyable for me. After learning more about Bernard, him and Lenina take a trip to the savage reservation, where they meet John and Linda. This chapter was packed full of interesting things. For example, we got to see the upbringing of John. In a lot of ways, he was like Bernard. He was a loner. He enjoyed things like reading, which no one else liked. Similarly, Bernard also enjoys things no one else does. Knowing this, you’d think they would become friends, right? Well, they did at first, then John betrays Bernard by not showing up at a party that Bernard had planned for everyone to see him. A few short chapters later, John, Bernard and Helmholtz are all arrested and brought before Mustapha Mond, a World Controller, for John throwing Soma out a hospital window, and the other two being his friends. Here, the 4 engage in a long conversation, where Bernard makes a last-ditch effort to not get deported by throwing John and Helmholtz under the bus. it backfires, and the trio are all deported to separate islands. The last chapter is purely focused on John. He is living in complete isolation, trying to live his best life. This is made hard, however, as there is constantly reporters and people filming him everywhere. It gets to the point where John the Savage decides to hang himself, putting himself out of his misery

Huxley’s Brave New World was a rollercoaster of a ride to say the least. There were plots that I couldn’t have guessed in a million years, which made the book a lot more enjoyable. With all things considered, I truly did enjoy the novel.

Chapter 5 of “Outsmart Your Brain” by Daniel Willingham is titled “Memory is the Residue of Thought” and focuses on the role of memory in learning and thinking.

Memory is essential for thinking and learning: Willingham emphasizes the importance of memory in thinking and problem-solving, stating that “thinking is memory in action.” Without memory, we would not be able to recognize patterns, make connections between different concepts, or build upon our previous knowledge.

After reading chapter 5 of outsmart your brain by Daniel T Willingham, I learned different ways to help comprehend information. His first strategy was to briefly read over whatever you were reading and take notes of the main ideas and or headings in the book so it is easier for you to understand the main/ important ideas in the text and makes your learning more time efficient.

In his book, he says that new readers are most likely to just highlight what they think is important even though it may not even be that relevant they may just be highlighting it because the book is hard and he thinks that when new readers read a harder book they may just skim over the book highlighting whatever because they think that it is boring just like classes and or lectures we kinda just assume that it is going to be boring so we kinda just don’t pay full attention to it missing dome rather important details.

His second tip was to make questions as you are reading to help you focus on what you want to know for example if a heading or main idea says “Meat only diet” a question to ask yourself could be “what are the benefits or disadvantages to this particular diet?” after you have done these two things you can start to pick up what all of this means and all of its topics now you can start answering all of these questions that you have taken notes on. He also suggests that you put down words that you do not understand and read them out loud once you are done reading.

This brings us to is third strategy taking notes while you are reading for example you write down the “meat only diet” and you find the answer of what it means do not wait until you have read the whole book chapter etc… stop at the end of the sentence of whatever and write down what you have read so you do not forget to write I down later on when you are done reading.

In “Outsmart Your Brain” by Daniel T. Willingham, I learned the easy 3 step overview to a essay Read, Recite, Review. As I read the passage given I should keep in mind the rough idea of what the article is about, and then look for information that answers the questions I have made. Then I recite, for this I need to repeat what I had just learnt like I was explaining it to somebody else. Then summarize it into my own words so I can understand more clearly and decide if it answers any of my questions that I had in my reading. I then should review my work, I learned that the reviewing stage should be an ongoing process in which I can revisit my content, where I focus on the questions made and the answers I have. (p. 96) I have also learned that a lot of the study strategies that I have been using should be avoided and aren’t as useful. I have used highlighting my notes and reading over my notes a lot to study for tests or just doing an assignment but now reading what actually helps is organization and thinking about meaning is what really helps memory. (p. 108)

As it says in chapter five

text books are hard to read. The material is dense there is a lot of information packed into relatively few words.(p. 90)

A strategy that can help with that is outsmarting your brain, using comprehension to fit the material you are reading and the goal you have for reading it.   Another strategy that can help is not just reading and highlighting you won’t get the important information.  Make sure you compare your information or perilously have knowledge about the topic you are reading so you are not just randomly highlighting the information you don’t know about.

Overall there are many strategies that can help with better understanding your book. This hole book more spasticity chapter 5 is very helpful.

I have learnt a lot of valuable information from chapter five “Outsmart Your Brain” by Daniel T. Willingham. in the book How to Read Difficult Books. Daniel Willingham writes about both what to do and what not to do when reading a difficult book and explains how you need to know the background on the subject you are reading if you are going to simply highlight. Daniel T. Willingham wrote that students focus on sentences and think that if they understand each one on their own that the whole paragraph will make sense. After stating this Willingham gave an example. The paragraphs ending scentance contradicted the paragraphs starting statement. He explained that most students don’t even realize this because they are paying attention to sentences and not fully understanding what is happening and as a read I realized I often focus on sentences too and make that mistake when the material I am reading is long and about something I don’t know about.

Willingham wrote about a useful strategy to help students better understand what it is they are reading. The strategy is called SQ3R, it stands for survey, question, read, recite and review. Following this strategy it would enable you to get a much better understanding of what it is you are reading even if the material is difficult like a text book. Willingham also discussed a some other versions that were less time consuming KWL and SOAR. I learned the importance of revision and good note taking, but not just your standard highlight and go type, but a much better plan so I can better known the information which I am reading.

When reading Chapter 5 of the book “Outsmart Your Brain” by Daniel Willingham I noticed that there are many things that I have been doing wrong such as just reading and highlighting, before I read the book I would always just read any text and guess what the most important parts of the book were so I could highlight them but when reading the book it said,

” how can you be sure that you are a good judge of what is important enough to highlight as you read the content of a topic you know little about for the first time.”

After reading this I now understand that you can’t just highlight random parts and think that they are important, instead, you could use the SQ3R method which is proven to improve comprehension.

Another thing I learned from this book is that a main factor to success when reading, for example, an article is taking notes as you go on. In the book, it says

“taking notes helps keep you mentally on task, and the notes will help you refresh your memory later.”

This line helped me understand why taking notes was very important, and why Mr. Macknight always tells us to take notes in class and when reading chapters in books. Something else I got from the book was that you cannot read quickly because when reading fast you don’t comprehend or understand what is going on the book says” speed reading is not a thing.” when I read this part of the book I understood that it takes time to read especially if you are taking notes and trying to take out all the useful information. It states

” if you skim difficult, unfamiliar material, you won’t understand it very well”

when reading this line helped me understand why reading quickly is not useful and cannot benefit you.
In conclusion chapter 5 of the book contained very useful information that I didn’t know before and it helped me understand more about taking notes reading and time management when reading.

By reading Chapter 5 of “Outsmart Your Brain” by Daniel Willingham, I have gained valuable insights and strategies for reading and comprehending challenging books. This chapter has taught me the importance of active reading, which is based on the use of relevant reading strategies and active note-taking. This includes the use of strategies like the SQ3R, which can greatly increase the likelihood that you actually understand the text, rather than just reading it. These strategies are to be used in place of popular and ineffective ones, like highlighting important parts.

Additionally, Willingham has also effectively taught me the value of breaking down texts into smaller parts and approaching them slowly. Willingham suggests using background knowledge and prior experiences to help make sense of new information and encourages readers to seek help from others when needed. He emphasizes the importance of persistence and patience and encourages readers to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and not be discouraged by initial difficulty.

Following the completion of this chapter, I have decided to take in Willingham’s advice regarding reading strategies. He has introduced us to SQ3R, which has existed for decades and is highly regarded by many educators. I plan on looking into SQ3R, but more importantly, I plan on exploring different reading strategies that have bases in more recent studies of psychology and literature. I believe that by having roots so deep into the past, the SQ3R may have become obsolete when compared to new studies, and I plan on figuring out rather that is the case or not.

Brave new world by Aldous Huxley is a fiction book about utopia. The book takes place in A.F. 632 (new counting of years, named after Henry Ford). Human beings are manufactured. Embryos are going from incubators to bottles and then being born. Their fate is chosen from the very beginning and depends on how the embryo was treated. The most treasured and well-treated embryos become Alpha or Beta humans. The ones that did not get enough time, oxygen, etc. are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. From the highest to the lowest class. Their whole education is manipulated by the government, even their thoughts.

Daniel. T. Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain addresses the main struggles students are faced with nowadays such as note taking, highlighting, and comprehension. The book then proposes solutions to said problems which made sense, and were well written.

Willingham’s first point was how students tend to struggle with reading comprehension as someone can tend to get lost in the word salad that is provided to us in a textbook. The reason that we perceive a textbook to be long and complicated is because we expect it to be organized in the traditional story book format where you have the beginning middle and end rather than a textbook that separates topics by categories and is not written with the intention to entertain, rather to educate. As someone who struggles with ADHD, I found these tips to be very helpful in terms of organization as this is something that I struggle with a lot.

Willingham’s second point about extracting text came as a surprise to me. Usually, I would grab a highlighter and label any text that seems most important to me without knowing exactly what I am looking for. Willingham’s proposed solution to this is to create questions about the headings and search for the answers in the text. This would allow me to focus more on the topic rather on the amount of words on my sheet which would set me on task, and would prevent me from getting distracted too much on the things around me.

After reading Willingham’s key points, I am safe to say that I have learned a lot. For starters, I now have a plan for the texts that I would read rather than jotting down random information that I probably wouldn’t use. As Willingham said, having a plan is better than not having a plan, and I completely agree as I have felt lost when I don’t stick to a specific order or set of instructions.

In chapter five of “outsmart your brain” from Daniel T. Willingham I learned how to read a text right and how to remember things easier. I thought I already new how to read and remember Textes but Willingham showed that I was completely wrong. For example: I am using the highlighter method by highlighting the most important stuff do the text. Researches have tested students by letting them all read and highlight the same text. Every student highlighted something else, some more and some less. So it shows that highlighting stuff in a text is a horrible plan because you will most likely not highlight the real important stuff or other unimportant things. I learned how to read a textbook and that its good it have an strategy of reading a text. May inform yourself about things in the text. It’s important to read and understand every single sentences of a text to understand the whole thing. Think about your goal and what you expect and want to know after you read the text. By textbooks its also important to connect some part. Textbooks are not that organized like storybooks which makes them way harder to read. Storybooks follow the actions and the material in textbooks are hierarchically, so you need to connect sentences you read right now to sentences you read a few pages ago. It also can help you to take notes while reading a text or research some parts you may not completely get. For remembering a text completely you may write a summary in your own words. After reading through all your notes you can make sure you understood everything. One of the most important things are also to read slow and reread the text a few times to remember and understand everything. In the end I learned really much from Willingham and I will try to take his advices for my learning in the future.

In this chapter I found the most useful parts for me were the strategies I do not I do not perform and the mistakes I never knew were mistakes. For example, I learned that just highlighting and reading is a bad strategy to help comprehend a text. The reason for this is because if I am learning a new subject, which happens often, I am not aware of the most important parts of the text and could be highlighting the wrong things because I am unaware of the framework of the text therefore have little basis for reasoning.

I also learned a solution to this new problem of mine. To improve my comprehension and avoid just reading and highlighting I can use the SQ3R method. S stands for survey. Meaning go over the headings and skim the txt to get a basic understanding. The Q stands for question. This instructs you to ask questions based on your survey or the headings and general text. Then read the text with your goal to answer the questions and basic understanding of the topic. Recite each section and see if it relates to the questions posed. Review your notes by summarizing the questions you chose. Doing all of this will help with my reading comprehension and further my learning.

One of the most interesting things I learned in the book Out Smart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham in chapter 5, is the facts that many students read with out understanding the context of what they are reading. Willingham said that many students think that if they understand what each individual sentence is saying, they will understand the whole book. He then gave an example paragraph with a sentence that contradicts what was being stated and said that many students miss that mistake when rating the clearness of the paragraph. I have discovered I do that too when I am reading something that I find dull and boring.

A reading strategy he gave to try and help this issue is called SQ3R. This strategy outlines a technique that try’s to maximize the amount of knowledge you retain. Although this technique may work to retain knowledge and help you understand the concepts more, it is very time consuming and has many steps involved. Even if it does help you understand the reading, I can not see my self using this strategy in a general setting. The only occasion I would think about using this strategy is if there is a very long and complex text that I am having difficulty understanding and a lack of understanding will cause bigger problems. The reason I would only use this strategy if I had too, is because it takes a lot of effort, time, and would demotivate me to read the book.  I did however learn a new strategy from reading this book, that if needed, I can implement to help me understand written texts more efficiently.

What I learned in Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel Willingham’s, chapter 5, is that they are many ways for us individuals to read a book the right way. It was a very interesting book to read, as well as extremely useful. It made me aware of my usual mistakes when it comes to reading comprehension and note taking.

Normally, I surprise myself being easily distracted when studying, but this book showed me other ways to ‘avoid’ this, and to be more focused while studying, surprisingly without it sounding tedious or boring. I like the strategies shown because it erases the habit of just reading, and it actually makes your brain pay attention to what it’s been said to keep going with it, in order to learn more. One of the tips that I already knew about is Tip 28: Take Notes as you Read. Usually when I read I forget all the information the next day. But since I stared applying this tip now I remember what I read and its more easy for me and I understand better the text.

What I’ve learned about Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make it Easy, by Danielle T. Willingham. Chapter 5. That it is really easy and effective to read text the correct way. I learned that I have been reading texts the wrong way because as I read I have to take notes to memorize and remember better. Another mistake that I have is that when I start reading without looking for subtitles, headings, quotes among others. To make the information easier I can search for definitions of words that I don’t know and highlight the most important paragraphs, but he says “how do you know that is the most important part” He explains how we can know and he gives us tips in how to improve. Thought the book I noticed various mistakes that I have to improve.

First, you need to read slowly to connect what you read a few minutes ago and what you are reading now. People usually summarize each chapter but he says we have to summarize each paragraph. This is for not leaving small details outside. I really enjoyed how easy it was to read this book and how it will help me improve future readings.

What I’ve learned from Outsmart Your Brain, by Daniel T. Willingham. Mostly, that I’ve been reading articles wrong. Willingham writes, and rewrites, and rewrites, that simply reading something and highlighting it the first time around is not a good plan to avoid taking notes, or to retain the information. Willingham brings up several reading strategies, but the one that I found the most practical was SQ3R. In a way, these two paragraphs are my attempt at the recite and review parts of it. I like to think that I already ask questions to myself questions when I read to learn, and when I read to read. In this case though, when I got to tip 27, I realized I hadn’t been thinking at all while reading the previous pages. My mind hadn’t been wandering, I just wasn’t thinking about the words on the page.

Another thing that I learned while reading the chapter, was that I tend to start skimming pages when I get bored of whatever I am reading. I also tend to not review my notes unless I need to answer a question quickly and without thinking too much about it. Honestly my study habits just kind of suck. I always knew that my study habits were… less than great, but reading this chapter has really put into perspective how bad they are. Working forward, I want to set more goals relating to study habits for myself.

Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham, PhD. The book talks about easy and effective ways for an individual to read a book the “right way”.  

The soluction is to set a concrete task as you read. The best known is called SQ3R (p. 95)

Learning that are ways to concentrate better whilst reading is what I am writing about.

Survey: Skim the reading, looking at the headings, subheading, and figures. Get a rough idea of what it’s about. This is how you’ll determine, for example, that an article about the Human Genome Project is about its economic consequences, not the ethical implications of sequencing human DNA. (p. 95)

The mistake I was doing according to the book is reading straight away and not looking over the skim through pages looking for headings, subheading, and figures and to ask questions about them if there are questions to ask.

Read: Keeping in mind the rough idea of the article’s content you developed when you surveyed the reading, it’s time to actually read. And now you have a concrete take to be completed as you read: look for information that answers the questions you’ve posed. (p. 96)

Before you begin the book you want to ask questions that may be answered along the way or that you may ask after each section or chapter.

Recite: When you’ve finished each section, recite what you’ve learned as if you were describing it to someone else. Summarize it and decide if it answers any of your questions. (p. 96)

Instead of summerizing after each chapter, summerize after each paragraph to process the information better without most likely forgetting some minor details.

Review: Reviewing is meant to be an ongoing process in which you revisit the content, focusing especially on the questions posed and the answers you derived. (p. 96)

Constantly reviewing is better than reading and reading without stopping because important things can just fly over your head.

Another thing I learned is that speed reading is not a thing. I’m a slow reader which I was ashamed of untill i read

speed reading is not a thing. (p. 101)

Knowing that I can read slowly to understand material better makes me feel better about it.

In this chapter, Daniel Willingham denies all I have done so far to read the books. Read, highlight the sentences that I think are important, and search the definitions of vocabulary words that I do not know. However, it does not assist us in comprehending deeply. How do we know the sentences we highlighted are the most important? How will we be able to use new vocabularies simply by writing their definitions? Throughout this chapter, I found a lot of things that I needed to improve to obtain reading strategies.

First, we need to connect what we are reading right now to what we read a few minutes ago, because sentences can take on quite different meanings depending on the surrounding context. That’s why highlighting does not work. People try to focus on only the highlighted sentences without the context. That means people might not comprehend correctly. They can interpret arbitrarily for themselves. To avoid this, we need to think about and set the goal of reading instead of highlighting. Acquire the basic knowledge and pose further questions about the topic. I think by doing these, we can pay more attention, gain interest, and make it easier to input the context, even if it is difficult to understand. And we should take a note on laptop to make it easy to look up information. It should include the summary and answer one of the questions that you posed. And you need to confirm if it can really help you refresh your memory later.

I learned a lot of strategies comprehending deeply and I am convinced of all of them. They all make sense to me, as I wrote above. However, there is one thing that I thought was wrong.” Teachers are ready to assign a textbook, even if it’s boring; it’s seen as a regrettable but unavoidable problem.”(p.90). Students might think the textbooks are  boring. But, the teachers are the only person who should not think it’s boring. I think the teachers have to believe it’s interesting. The teachers might think that we don’t know their enthusiasm. But we know. The teachers should love the topics and want to teach them to the students. This leads students to learn with better environment and enthusiasm.

While reading this chapter, I must admit to doing some of the things Willingham advises against. One of these being Tip 26: Just Read and Highlight. In response to this, he recommends using the SQ3R method: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. I have never heard of this before, and typically stick to highlighting and reviewing, and messily attempt a quick study method. I believe that with this new technique, I have a cogent method that does not leave me scrambling to understand a certain text or reading.

Another method newly discovered is Tip 28: Take Notes As You Read. This specific tip entails writing notes during readings of texts, rather than reading the text as is. I find that I understand a topic better when I write it down or have something separate from the text to look back to, so I have confidence in this tip. Willingham provides a structure for your notes, which I believe will help. This is due to my tendency of having unfinished notes, and only going over the text itself.

In chapter 5 of Daniel Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain, we come to the realization of numerous habits we do when studying advanced texts. He outlines poor practices we do subconsciously, and ways we can improve the effects of those habits. As an example, Willingham speaks on how our brain interprets the more complex information that we read. He notes that our brain is unlikely to automatically connect ideas from different sections in a textbook, as we are new to the subject and our brain is not looking for any connections, but rather trying to consume all the information without analyzing it. Another point I found fascinating was when Willingham explains that our brain reads these assigned textbooks in the same way we read for amusement. The first time we read a text, we are able to point out simple errors- as we would in a novel- but fail to make an in-depth analysis of the topic. Tying onto that, on page 91 Willingham writes “if readers simply understand each sentence on its own, they figure they are doing what they’re supposed to do.”. I found that statement rather impactful as it hadn’t occurred to me before, but is certainly a habit I possess. And while talking on all of these poor reading habits we have, Willingham suggests strategies that can be used for improvement.

One point that is repeated frequently is the use of questions. Willingham notes that simply asking questions prior to reading a text can help you focus on the more “hidden” details of a text. He recommends using headings (and subheadings) to help guide you when creating these inquiries. He also emphasizes the use of having a set of tasks or goals before reading a text, these could be seperate from the questions, or be the questions themselves! Lastly, Willingham points out the use of notes, highlighting, and any other stratagy someone may use to help them interpret a text. He says that different strategies work for different individuals but most importantly, “using a strategy is better than not using one.” (p. 97).

This short chapter held lots of potential for someone like myself to further explore the world of detailed reading, especially when trying to improve their studying habits.

Nyah Sharratt – 01/30

This charapter is titled “How to read difficult books”, and I honestly think this is something we all have asked ourselves, but never really felt the need to think more in debt about it. Which is why I found this incredibly helpful and interesting. It really does gives us real tips and advise. First, the author introduced us to the concept of reading a hard book, and talks about how it really is difficult and most importantly, why. I liked how he later explained what happens in our brain and how we can “outsmart it”. He went in debt about the common errors, what we usually do, what and how to change it.

I do have to say that even if i did found it very helpful, and i will consider it in my future readings, I already did some of the stuff he talks about. Like highlighting and taking notes, but he did made me rethink how I do it and what information should I prioritize.

At the end, the thing i definitely founded the most interesting was the reading techniques. I feel like applying them will change the reading experience for me.

By reading a part of the book “Outsmart Your Brain” By Daniel T. Willingham, I have learned a lot of things – How to read a “difficult” book, to be specific.  In the first two pages of the book, the author, Daniel, introduces the idea of reading a “hard” book and acknowledges the struggle and the level of effort that would have to be put in to accomplish such a thing. He then introduces the readers to a text, which is most likely a part of a “hard” book the author claims to be. He then asks if anyone notices a contradiction between the former and latter claims. Through this, I have learned that I have not been reading a text to its utmost detail for all this time, although I thought I did.  Reading this part of the book gave me the curiosity to continue reading.

As the book progresses and moves onto the next topic of how to read a “hard” book, The author now gives the readers tips on how to do so. He mentions the act of highlighting, which is widely practiced as a method of close reading. However, the author Daniel opposes this idea, claiming that it is inefficient and that there is no point in doing such. He claims that people reading for the first time; are most likely to highlight a text they believe to be predominant, even if it doesn’t have any relevance to the main topic it is discussing. He states that first-time readers are not to judge whether part of the text is relevant. He adds to the argument and suggests a new method, taking notes. When we listen to lectures and classes, we are bound to naturally think and assume its content to be not amusing, boring or difficult. It is the same for books. When we read a hard book, we tend to assume its content, even before reading the actual text; we tend to skim through the book, not knowing the hidden details and important information.  Daniel states that by taking notes, our brain can process more content simultaneously by organizing them and making them easier to understand.

Books are not always fun, especially if you are reading a book that you assume is hard. However, when you force yourself to read more, you tend to get into a habit of reading, and you get more content in a shorter time, which makes your reading skills more efficient. From personal experience, I have never really enjoyed reading, until I forced myself to read over and over again and explore more books at the bookshop. By doing this, I have found a book I enjoy reading – and I tend to read it – regardless of the duty of reading every day, for 15 minutes. This reminder has become a habit, and I find myself reading – for more than 15 minutes before I even realize the independent reading task. In my background of being raised bilingually, It has been such a struggle to master both languages, with pretty good fluency. My parent would speak in Korean on one day, and English on the other. I did the same with books. Korean on the first day, English on the second. By doing this, I was able to improve both my Korean and English skills, and I believe I can speak both languages fluently. However, I have a lot to learn, and this book has shown me how to read more confidently and efficiently.

When reading the chapter 5 of “Outsmart Your Brain” By Daniel T. Willingham, it taught me a a couple of things that I should do, but also not do. Things I was actually surprised by, and things that I have noticed already help me. I enjoyed how easy it was to follow along the book, and how it taught me how to efficiently do my work. I feel I have a better understanding and will comprehend texts better if doing the tips he has given.

The thing that surprised me the most was to not highlight you pages or certain parts of the text you are reading. He had mentioned not to do this because you do not know if you are highlighting the correct information. “How can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (pg. 93). This was mentioned by him, and after i read it, it made more sense to me. Even though I do mostly highlight key things that I notice, I might not be including the most important part of it, or I might be missing something. The second thing that was helpful, but I did already know, was taking notes. I already take notes depending on how knowledgable I am with the topic or book I am reading about, but it never hurts to have extra notes for later on if you get confused or forget what happened at a specific time in the text. And last is writing a summery after each sub heading. If you right a summery it will help you retain more and understand what is happening. Doing this in the future could really help me in tests to become more aware and efficient with my words to understand. Especially if you have many things to remember at once, writing a small summery on what it is, or what it is about could really help me. And writing something causes your brain to remember better and more efficiently than just reviewing over and over again but still mixing the information up.

Overall, I think I will be doing these tips in the future to help me understand large quantities of information better, and to learn more and more and grow not only my vocabulary, but also my knowledge.

Chapter five of Willingham’s Outsmart your brain is titled How to read difficult books. Although he doesn’t give a straight up answer “this is how to read a difficult book”, he does give some useful tips and advice. He started the chapter off by stating how teachers are willing to give us textbooks that go very in depth in a subject even if it is boring or doesn’t always help us. Teachers may think it would help us, giving us a long, in-depth explanation, but as many people say; “Quality over quantity”. Willingham also explains how most readers are less likely to notice if two sentences contradict each other, rather they notice a word they don’t understand. This can be caused by not understanding what individual sentences have in common with each other; it’s one thing to understand what an individual sentence means, but if you can’t understand the big picture, that’s when it becomes a problem.

A tip or piece of advice Willingham gives us is to not highlight the “important stuff” while reading, but rather take notes, unless you are already familiar with the subject. By doing so, we can memorize faster and have a better understanding of the main idea. If we simply highlight what we deem important or significant, we will most likely miss something important, or not be highlighting the important information. He says by finding a reading tool that works for us will also help us read difficult books. For example; the KWL tool, thinking of something you KNOW, something you WANT to know/learn, and something you’ve learned. This tool works best for me because it helps me organize my thoughts well and can help me summarize what I know or what I’ve learned.

The last tip he gave us that I thought was important, was to make sure we create time every day for reading. Not just to read 15 minutes anytime of the day, but at a time when we have the right mindset to read and absorb information. Of course, there will be times where we will have other priorities, but we have to remember that there’s no such thing as speed reading; aka skimming for the “important stuff”. If you do miss your scheduled reading time, don’t just go to a website with a summary in the place of reading the text; instead find the time another day. Learning aids/summaries of texts will not make your understanding better because it won’t have all the information you need; it will be whatever that writer thought was important, not your thoughts.

Chapter 5 of Outsmart your brain by Daniel T. Willingham made me overthink constantly repeated think and questions and careful that I got trapped in my own thinking. It is very tiring to be reminded of all the same information all over again and again. But that’s how it works for me (usually). Even if it’s annoying to listen to it, it is stuck in my brain and after some days, I unconsciously do what they said and described. And that’s how I believe in this book.

There was not very much that I did not already know somehow. For example the highlighting. When I read my old highlighted texts and already know the whole topic, I saw myself highlighting weird and unimportant information. The thing I learned and will try to use is to make topic questions. I noticed that when a teacher said an important question at the beginning of a lesson, it became much easier to remember the topics with all the details.

What I never heard about before were strategies for reading. And there is a lot of them. I did not cache a lot from Tip 27 and needed to read it a few times, translate words I did not know, and summarize it slowly to myself. It is a skill I never really used because it is very time-consuming and my brain hurts just thinking about it.

Reading Daniel T. Wellingham’s Outsmart Your Brain was rather an eye opening experience. The fifth chapter on what to do and what not to do when reading a difficult book, say a textbook,  is rather simple but hard to execute. To understand textbooks you must understand how they are structured, because unlike storybooks, textbooks are not structured in a chronological order, but a collection of ideas, linking one to another. Making minimal efforts to understand a book won’t get you very far, especially if it is a text with topics you are unfamiliar with.

This chapter emphasizes what you should and shouldn’t do whilst reading a text. One of the key takeaways I learned from this chapter was not to highlight, which is a habit I do as well. Find an important looking sentence? Highlight that! Find a new word I have never heard of? Highlight the term and definition! At the end, the entirety of the handout I was assigned to read is filled with different neon colours. On the surface, highlighting seems logical and effective, but it is explained that most times, the highlighted parts aren’t even the most important information. The only time you should be highlighting texts is when you are familiar with the text’s subject, which most times I am not.

After reading Chapter 5 of Outsmart Your Brain by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham, I learned about three strategies that I can use to successfully comprehend information from a reading material by looking over the reading before I read it, posing questions as reading goals, and by structuring my notes so I can stay on task as I read. The first strategy is to skim over the reading while taking notes of the reading’s learning aids (bolded words, main ideas, side bars, etc.), headings, and subheadings. Skimming over the reading material will help me understand what might be important in the reading by giving me some knowledge of what I’m about to read, and will also help me prepare for the other two strategies.

The second strategy is to make questions about the reading which I will answer in my notes as I read. One helpful tip I learned from Dr. Willingham is to make questions from the subheadings and headings of the reading. For example, if one of the headings is “The Effect of Global Warming on Emperor Penguins,” a question I could ask is “What is the effect of global warming on emperor penguins?” Now, after completing the first and second strategies, I know the basic topics of the reading material and I have questions to answer as I read, which serves as a reading goal. Finally, the third and final strategy is to take notes while I read. This involves splitting my notes into clear sections based on the reading’s headings and subheadings, writing down the questions I created in their corresponding sections, and writing down a summary after each subheading. The summaries may include the section’s main idea, its connection to the main section of the reading, and how the section answers at least one of my reading questions. Dr. Willingham also recommends for students to write down any new vocabulary words they have learned in their notes and to recite what they have learned out loud after completing the reading.

Dr. Willingham’s preferred reading strategies are known as the acronym SQ3R. The ‘S’ stands for ‘survey’ (skim the reading), the ‘Q’ stands for ‘question’ (pose questions), and the three ‘R’s stand for ‘read’, ‘recite’, and ‘review’ (take your notes as you read, recite out loud what you remember from the reading, and review your notes later). I plan to use the SQ3R strategy in the near and far future because it will train my brain to efficiently comprehend reading materials regarding a topic that I have little background knowledge on.

After reading “Outsmart your Brain” Chapter 5, I learned many things about reading and understanding difficult textbooks. I learned that textbook writers often organize the main ideas differently so the reader can affiliate them, making it challenging and boring for some. Meanwhile, most of the storybooks are written in a way that you can find and connect the ideas page by page, making it easy to understand. One of the most shocking things that I learned from this book is that highlighting is not the best option unless you know the topic well because, as the author says, “how can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (p. 93) it may be important for you but not for everyone. And this makes sense because everyone has different main ideas every time we have to highlight something in class on a textbook. A solution for this is taking notes while you are reading. 

I learned that taking notes while reading can help you memorize faster. By taking notes while reading, you are processing the necessary information and adapting it to your understanding, making it easy to learn and study later. Adding headings and subheadings with a small summary and about three statements may help organize your notes more, and adding questions to your notes may help. Asking a question such as “why…?” and answering them at the end can help to know if you took the notes needed. And lastly, read your notes after you finish reading to take refresh after all that new information. 

The book also mentions the other three methods to take good notes, “SQ3R, KWL, and SOAR” each of these methods can help me organize my notes better and get a better presentation and make them understandable. “KWL” will help me to ask the right questions and to look for the correct information. Meanwhile, “SQ3R” and “SOAR” will allow me to organize my notes.

When I read chapter 5 of Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham, I learned many new thing that will definitely help me in the future with my comprehension of texts and different strategies that will help me work efficiently. I enjoyed how easy his book was for me to read and understand, he made sense in what he was trying to tell us, and he made it very easy for us to learn new tips and tricks to help us in the future. He also told us what we shouldn’t do when reading, which is very helpful for me as I am not a confident reader.

The three biggest thing I learned from him are 1: reading and highlighting doesn’t work (unless it’s a topic that you already know very well). This surprised me when I read it because I usually always highlight the important information in texts and I thought that it helped me. His response after telling us this was that “how can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (p. 93) that’s when I realized unless its plainly written out as this is the most important information you never actually know if you are highlighting and remembering the correct information. 2: Taking notes with reading will help you stay focused and on task, it will also help you in remembering what happened in the text. This could be done on a laptop or on paper (Willingham suggested to use a laptop since it’s convenience with searching on the internet for words you aren’t familiar with) This is useful to me because I get distracted very easily when reading a book (especially if it’s a school related book) and if I start taking notes while I read this might help me focus and actually understand what I am reading. Lastly 3: After each subheading right a summary to remind you about the chapter. This seems very useful to me if you have a test coming up and you need to read part of a text. Writing a summery makes it so that you can retain the text better in your memory and that understand it better. You should write the summery about these three things, “an important qualification of the summery, a comment on how this section relates to the main section and, an implication of the summary for something else the author concluded.” (p. 99)

There was also many other things that I learned like how you shouldn’t plunge into texts without preparation, how to use SQ3R and many other techniques, that speed reading doesn’t work, how strategies with reading is a thing and how its important, and many more useful things that I will use in the future when reading a text, either to study, or just for fun.

In chapter 5 of willingham we are presented with some real world cases in which for example a textbook that seems hard to read. Once we read a bit more the chapter we realize that sometimes the solution is easier than we think. This also connects with some situations that we have all faced like when weread a book. This cahpter also adresses the familiar situation of being in a class and not knowing what to write in your notes. The book helps you identify the different mistakes that we make when it comes to reading and writing.

This chapter additionalluy makes us reflect on what we do while reading such as just highlighting the important parts. When we do this we dont really take in the information and on the long run we just forget what we read and use this technique throughout school life. We should also have in mind specific questions when we read like who are the characters and how they affect the plot.

Since English is not my first language, I had difficulty reading. It was hard to summarize, and I often forgot the contents of the text while reading. But I didn’t know exactly what to try, so I just mechanically highlighted some sentences Therefore, the advice given in the book is useful.
According to the book, it helps to understand the purpose of reading before just doing it. I used this method to read “The Brave New World.” I wrote down the questions in my notebook while reading the book, and filled in the answers to the questions by reading the following parts. As I repeated this process, I found that my notes were more organized. So far, all I’ve written has been a copy of what seems important. As advised in the book, the main content was easily seen as I read the article while checking the purpose.
In the book, it is said that it is not wrong to take time to read slowly rather than speed reading. Until now, it has become a habit to speed read books in my first language, so I have repeated the same behavior when I read English. I thought improving my English skills was the first priority, so I tried to make it seem like I was reading in my first language when I read English. But as advised in the book, taking the time to read was much more appropriate for me now. As I read the text slowly and organized it into notes, the contents were not mixed. Also, it helped me improve my English skills by searching for words I didn’t know in each sentence.

The section Allocate Significant Time to Reading, from Chapter 5 How to Read Difficult Books states, “It’s difficult to read texts on complex topics written by authors who are not afraid to bore their audience” (p. 101). Three pages into this chapter, I quickly realized D. T. Willingham is no scaredy cat. I read the words on the page, amazed Willingham could stretch a relatively simple idea like “give yourself enough time to do your reading” into four pages of text. This is not a controversial stance that requires an elaborate argument. Yet Willingham dissects this concept (if you would call the statement Allocate Significant Time to Reading a concept. Isn’t that just a logical thing we all implicitly agree on?) until you feel your eyes begin to bleed.

However, I cannot only complain about this book. I realize that as we head off to university in a couple of years, Willingham’s revelations (okay, that was a little sarcastic) might benefit us. The most significant tip for me was, before you start reading, think about what you are going to learn. To get a hint of this, flip through the pages to get a sense of what the chapter is about. Make an outline with possible headings for your reading notes. Other learning points included; try to stay awake as you read dry material, place post-it’s on pages ahead of your reading to serve as little reminders that your mind alive, do not just highlight information that seems important, but keep notes as you read, and do not rely on end of chapter summaries and boldface text to give you the essential information. (This essential information can all be found in the boldface text and “in a sentence” summaries at the end of each reading strategy tip). 

I look forward to attaining enlightenment reading Chapter 6, How to Study for Exams. I wonder if Willingham will suggest revolutionary techniques such as; gain a deep understanding of concepts, rather than just surface memorization; create complete study notes; and overall, Allocate Significant Time to Studying to avoid last-minute cramming. Ground breaking!

Solid term, not too shabby, couldve been better, but it wasnt, huge bummer, anyways I live with it, lets hope for a B+ this term, wouldnt be bad. Honestly I find my essays so good, but everyone has their own opinions, for my second language, I do good, cant complain.

For the Unit Final I have done at the end of term one, I received comments that reflect on my weaknesses as well as strengths. One of my main strengths was that I used quotations from the text relevantly, and I have taken attention to the language of each passage. On the other hand, I have received feedback on how I could improve my overall organization of the body paragraphs. I have stated the use of imagery in the introduction paragraph, however, it was not explained further in the body paragraphs. This was an excellent opportunity for me to learn more about the topic itself as well as write a good comparison essay. I will take all the commentary into consideration when writing future writing assignments.

Looking back at my term 1 summative assessment I should work on two things: I should work on reading over the passages carefully to make sure my ideas are accurate and that they align with the text. This is to make sure my information is as accurate as possible. The second thing I need to work on is my spelling errors which is a constant problem accruing in my writing. To fix this I should read over my writing slower and should practice more with my vocabulary. In this assessment I also learned how to write a comparison essay which is useful.

My name is Isabella. I am from Mexico. This is my first week at Brookes and I’ll like to tell you a little bit about myself.

I was born in Toluca, Mexico. But I moved out to Tamaulipas with my mom and one of my older sisters when I was young and grew up there. Since last year, I had been wanting to study in another country because it seemed like a really big experience to have, so I am really happy that I got the opportunity to come here. I plan to stay here for all my high school and I’ve been having a really good time so far.

I hope I can quickly get used to my classes and I’m excited for my future here.

In my reflection I have to read  and write more in English because I don’t know how to be organized in a paragraph and imbruing to understanding better, I was thinking maybe I could come up with the ideas and after I could  write things that are more relatable to the assignment not just putting in the paragraph stuff  that just went into my mind and thinking pother people are going to get that too. I also have to work on spelling because its a bit hard for me.

Looking back on the term 1 final, I definitely could have analyzed the texts in far more detail and paid more attention to some of the more hidden aspects. Things such as the language and style of the writing were some of the many techniques that I could have spent more time studying rather than glossing over each topic, barely acknowledging their careful placement in the texts. Overall, I became more aware of the fact that I should pay more attention to detail and further analyzing that detail.

Nyah Sharratt – 01/11

After writing my term one essay, the feedback mostly consisted of having more quotations. The reason for that it to support my evidence and answers more clearly. It will give the reader a better reason to believe and overall will make my essay better. I also need to work a bit on my organization, my notes were a little messy and a little confusing to follow, so my final product may of been a bit unorganized as well.

I was unable to fully complete my unit one final Essay ( War in Literature ), i did not manage my time well and was only able to state the similarities. The feedback i was given tells me that i showed promise and efforts to engage in literary analysis. However, the key things i need to work on is practising my writing and reviewing “Essay Writing document” on Managebac. One thing i will do differently for my next Essay is the thoroughly review the Essay Writing Document, plan my Essay before i start writing and mange my time wisely.

The skill I need to continue to work on is analysis. To improve explaining in greater detail, how to show the features I observed better in my text. To improve upon this I will first make a draft, read it over and then try to add greater detail into he areas that I realize lack better explantation. I will also try to re-read the text I was given to analyze in order to better absorb the information, and other parts I may need like tone.

I learned from the feedback that i didn’t use that much  literary techniques while explaining the effects that i observe when reading the passages. i noticed that i could have been more detailed and explained how it connected to the techniques that were taught to us.For next time i will reflect on what i have written while explaining what techniques were used to write the poem.

The comment I got is that I should include evidence such as book quotations. Also, I have to work on understanding the context of references and using them correctly. For these, I will be rereading the references several times to fully understand the context and how they affect the readers. Also, in order not to forget the contents of each sentence, I will make a habit of taking notes of important contents when reading. Not just the content, but I will also write a short opinion or reference, thinking about what effect this content will have when writing an essay later.

I have learned a lot from term one this year, and Mr. Macmaster’s feedback on the unit final has shown me what I need to work on. I used very far too much, which shows that I might need to work on my vocabulary a little bit (or maybe very much so 🙂 ). I also relied on generalizations way too much. Generalizations are almost never a good idea to use, and I used like 4 of them. As Mr. Macknight’s marking key says “Your assertion should be specific—avoid making assertions that are vague, or assertions that are generalizations.” I also failed to use many quotations in the second paragraph, which didn’t help my case. lastly i stuck my stronger paragraph infront which was a mistake, it should have been in the back. (I guess I should end with my generalizations sentences shouldn’t I)