Reading & Notetaking

I find I am quite a fast reader when I read for pleasure. However, when I am reading for understanding, as I am for academic studies, I am much slower. I spend a lot of time flipping back and forth between the articles and a Google Doc where I take my notes. I find taking my notes as I read most effective and then will review and reflect after I have read the article. I also realized I used the SQ3R reading strategy without even realizing it. Primarily as I read for an academic purpose I focus on the learning outcomes as my ‘questions’ and try to answer them throughout my reading and review as necessary. I find I can only read for about 30 minutes before I need a break. One strategy I try to use is read for 25, break for 5 minutes. This allows me to extend my total length of reading and studying time. 

As I read a text, I focus primarily on the comprehension of the text. It is not until the review and reflection time that I begin to explore analyzing, interpreting and evaluating the text. These components are done more so in my reflective blogs and discussions.
When I am reading a textbook for a course, I try to improve my knowledge of the vocabulary by making a glossary in addition to my notes. Often the keywords are bolded so I scan through the chapter and write down all the words that are bolded. Then I go to the back of the textbook and look up the definitions of the words. I find this to be helpful so I have a developed schema before I read the chapter. This strategy allows me to read through the chapter with a higher level of understanding and less frustration trying to figure out what is meant by certain terminology. It also allows me the ability to quickly reference terminology I forget the meaning of. 

When I do brainstorming (specifically in my class), we always agree that there are no bad ideas. The point of brainstorming is to gather as many ideas as possible. We use post it notes and have 1 idea per post it and then try to categorize them if possible after. I find the tangible post-its help me to get excited about generating many ideas. Sometimes it is more difficult to make the connections and categorize them after the ideas. 

I had not used the Cornell method before, though found it similar to the way I do my notes with bullets. I use headers and indents with my bullet points to help me organise my notes online. I feel the two strategies are connected because the first column in the Cornell method would be a normal bullet point and the second column in the Cornell would be an indented bullet point. For me the flow of working down the page is easier than going left to right with the Cornell method. The other benefit about taking my notes online is that I can insert links to other sites or articles directly in my notes for future reference. 

As I take notes from articles, I always include the APA referencing of the article so I can access it easily in the future. I sometime struggle with writing page numbers for every note I make throughout the article. However, I do know I can easily go back and search the article to find the point again if I need it.

Strategies have been taken from Charles Sturt University Study Skills Guides (https://cms.csu.edu.au/student/study/skills/guidesandtips/study-skills) : 

-reading strategies 

-critical thinking 

-brainstorming and mindmapping

-notetaking while reading 

Referencing

I believe I began learning about referencing as early as late elementary school. In elementary school and even high school, we didn’t have to use a proper style format. For the most part, as long as you listed some references or titles of the books in your bibliography, you were fine. Once I began my university career, there was a definite push to write in a scholarly manner with proper referencing and citations. I do remember that my history course in university required MLA and it was challenging to switch back and forth between the two styles. I was constantly referring to a style guide to make sure that it was written properly.

I am sure it will be a bit of an adjustment getting used to using scholarly journals in my writing and referencing using APA style. While I do write on my personal blog, there isn’t often a need for referencing and when there is, I usually use links to the original source of information.  Luckily as a psychology student, we used APA referencing. Therefore hopefully I will be able to remember most of it pretty easily.

Referencing also proves to others that you have done additional reading and research to back up your opinions and ideas with research. You can show that you are making connections between journal articles and further analyse them in relation to your topic of study.

Because I use Google Docs to take my notes, there is a great add-on from the app store you can find called EasyBib Bibliography Creator. This is a great tool for searching the title of your article and choosing the style you want the bibliography to appear in. While this helps me tremendously in creating my list of references in APA format, I know it is still always good to double check that it has been generated correctly.

I believe it is important to use proper referencing to credit the author of the original work. It is important that those who have come before us in this field of study are recognized for their time, research and knowledge. It is also important that we don’t take credit for someone’s work and plagarise content as our own thoughts.

Wikipedia is not a scholarly resource that should be used within an academic paper as it is not peer reviewed by knowledgeable scholars, rather anyone is allowed to contribute to the site. However, it often can be a place to start from specifically for less academic pieces of writing. Wikipedia has a wealth of information and is usually referenced with footnotes. These footnotes can lead you to other strong resources that you could use. If I find information on Wikipedia that I think might find useful, I always ensure I find an additional source that confirms this information to be valid. Personally, I rarely use Wikipedia but for general knowledge, sometimes it can be a fast way to find an answer.

The Ideal Teacher

Without relationships, you can not learn. For me, you can't be a great teacher without developing a personal connection. There is so much depth to our students that on any given day something just might not be sitting right with them. This could impair any learning that would hopefully take place during a lesson. However, when students know they have a safe and secure environment with a teacher who actually cares, they are more likely to open up and work through whatever is going on to allow the learning to then take place.

When I think back to my favourite teachers at school growing up, it had nothing to do with the content they taught me (though I’m sure they were amazing at teaching) but rather how they made me felt. Just like in any relationship, it is the small things that make a difference and remembered. My ninth grade teacher not only showed up to a funeral of a family member but she also remembered every year throughout high school. My fourth-grade teacher helped me understand what it was like to overcome challenges and be resilient. My ballet teacher would sit and talk after a class about everything in life just because she cared. Not only were these meaningful conversations and experiences for me but this also translated into how we interacted inside the classroom. These are the teachers who have taught me most about what it is to be a teacher, how to teach and how to be a person you can be proud of.

Through reflection, this reminds me of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Students need to feel safe, to need to know that harm will not come to them and that they are allowed to be who they are without laughter directed at them. Our students need to be able to come to school feeling warm, clothed and with food in their stomachs. Our students need to feel like they belong to a community where individual differences are celebrated. Our students need to know that their teachers care. As students develop their basic needs and their self-esteem is boosted, it is then that the student is able to let their guard down to learning.

In the Durham District School Board in Canada during my student teacher practicum, I assisted with a morning breakfast club for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who may not have had another opportunity to start the day with a bit of food. These kinds of programmes within schools not only help to satisfy the basic needs of students but also helps to build the relationships with the students. When a student sees a teacher coming in early to make sure they have food there is this unspoken mutual respect that instantly appears. Even further when a teacher can then sit down beside the student and have a conversation with them before school. No longer is the teacher seen as just the teacher but more of an equal which allows students to break down barriers and develop a sense of comfort.

I currently work at an international school so things like a breakfast club will never exist at my school. However, even while a student’s home life might have some of the lower needs taken care of, students still need to feel safe and cared for in order to be able to learn. So much of my job revolves around pastoral care and well being of my students. One of the things I have done in my class for the past two years is have a weekly email programme as part of my writing programme. Students are required to write an email to me each week through their student accounts about one of the given topics or anything else they may wish to share. This has allowed students another way to feel comfortable talking to me about things that are happening at school and in their life. Sometimes it is not always easy to have conversations face to face but with the barrier of a computer screen, you can learn a lot about the person on the other end. I have had my students write to me from everything from homework issues, fights with classmates, the death of pets, best friends leaving the country, grandparents that are ill and much more. Would these conversations have come up inside the classroom? Maybe, maybe not. But what I do know is that having the dialogue through email made my learning environment a safe space for any conversation whenever they needed it. Even in the summer, I still sometimes get a few emails from my students showing me that to them, that connection was important to them and in helping them grow.

It is not good enough to just be a teacher who knows the curriculum if you cannot connect to your students to deliver the content in a meaningful way. The only way you can learn what will be engaging for your students is if you take the time to get to know them.  

If you are interested in reading more about the email programme I implemented, please feel free to view the following resource I created:https://www.sites.google.com/site/msemilymaclean/gmailhome

Huitt, W. (2007). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [August 10,2015] from, http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/regsys/maslow.html