Monday, September 21, 2009

Jess's Metacognition

During my reading I never sat back and thought about what I was reading deeper then what was needed for school work and assignments. However last semester I had the pleasure of taking X460, Books for Reading Instruction. This class taught me different strategies for teaching students how to track their own metacognition. Through this class I found myself reading for a deeper meaning in my books not only outside of the classroom but for classroom texts as well. Even though most of the reading strategies I learned were targeted for children and children's books they became useful for me as well as a college student. Tracking my thoughts with sticky notes, and placing markers on important ideas helped me to take better notes, and to find things easier in a longer chapter. As I entered this current semester I found myself reading till I understood the text and highlighting and tracking thoughts and questions more then I ever have before. Not only do I believe this will help my school work but it also brings much more meaning to books I might have not found interesting in previous semesters or school years.

My writing unlike reading usually becomes very focused on my own thoughts without a lot of effort. I usually start a paper, at least ones with personal ideas infused into them jotting down notes about the path of I want to take. After writing a paper I find it important to go through my final draft sentence by sentence and make thoughts and notes in the margins that help me to better organize it. Since i've been writing I have gotten carried away with my thoughts through papers. The notes in the margin help me rearrange my thoughts in a way that makes the paper more fluent and easy to read.



As a teacher I want to strive to teach students better ways to study, read, and write. This will include strategies that help them track their metacognition. I think that as a student I wish I would have been taught more strategies for reading and studying material that is being read. I also wish more time was spent on specific writing techniques.

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