Distracted Reader: Help I Have No Idea What I Just Read

Fun and bubbly teacher promotes laughter and encourages quick thinking. I will teach you some techniques that will help you to "velcro" details from reading to your brain. Not everything that you read is important actually. In fact, there are ways to skip around in the reading, find your details, and be done with it. I will teach you all of the techniques I know. I have 22 techniques in total and probably a few more we will find along the way.  Class uses Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Don't read ahead, I will read it with you in class to pull out information. 

I model, model, model everything. 
I will bring short excerpts from old boring books and model one technique each class. These are not from any text book. These are skills I have acquired teaching over the years and from struggling through reading myself. Class is easy to follow. I will present the name of the technique. Next, I ask students to review any prior knowledge they have about the topic. I will mark all over my paper and students will follow along with me. They will write down or draw exactly what I have written on my page. As an assessment of skill, after we have worked through a short excerpt of text, I will present two comprehension questions. As a class, we will listen to every answer and find if we are all on the same page. If not, I will guide students in their thinking process.

Students are welcome to share at any time. The atmosphere of the class is light and bubbly. The point is to reassure students that they can read and read well. No one memorizes anything in its' entirety. I will show you what is important and where it lives in the text. Students are welcome to ask me: who, what, where, when, why, and how. I am never offended and love the opportunity to hear your student's mind. It is not about the content of the text I show to the students. I want to guide students to have real-life tools to succeed and thrive in school and in college. Class uses Treasure Island

A $20 refund will be given if you are a returning student from one of my previous Reading or Writing classes.


Apr 7       Use background knowledge 
Apr 8       Use background knowledge continued.
Apr 14     Ask questions
Apr 15     Identify author's purpose
Apr 21     Identify the main idea
Apr 22     Recognize sequence
Apr 28     Recognize cause and effect
Apr 29     Make inferences
May 5     Ask questions
May 6     Identify author's purpose
May 12   Identify the main idea
May 13   Recognize sequence
May 19   Recognize cause and effect
May 20   Make inferences
May 26   Make predictions
May 27   Summarize 
Jun  2     Distinguish fact and opinion
Jun 3      Find facts and Details
Jun 9     Recognize compare and contrast Venn Diagram
Jun 10   Make connections