Natalie DiSalvo! Importance

Thinking about how I read texts seemed rather difficult to reflect on since it just comes naturally at this age. I tried to read over the paragraph with the descriptions of what the blog was about to try and think about how I read and what I do to get the main idea of the text. I read one paragraph at a time and try to think of how to reword what I read. The way that I know that I grasped the main ideas is when I can explain the paragraph to someone else with my own words. Another strategy that I do when reading a long text is reading the first and last few sentences in each paragraph and skimming over the middle section. That usually highlights the main points of the paragraph and gives me a good understanding of what the sections are about. One can also read the captions of each section of an article before reading the text to give them an idea of what they will be reading about. It would also get the reader in the right mind set prior to the reading.

As I read, there is definitely an internal conversation that I have with myself. I can hear myself talking and reading the text aloud in my head. It is pretty wild that people can hear themselves thinking within their own head! I can always catch myself drifting away from the text when it comes time to recap a paragraph after I have “read it”. When I cannot remember what I just read, I realize that I have drifted off. Sometimes I even catch myself looking at the page but actually thinking about my plans for later in the day instead of reading the context in front of me! I find myself drifting off from reading at least one time a day, especially if I have a hard time relating to the reading. Another reason I drift off from the text is because I do not enjoy the reading-whether it be because I do not like the subject the reading is over, or if the reading is long and drawn out.

I think that finding the important information within text is difficult, but the ways I tend to go about finding it is mentioned in the first paragraph. However, I still have a hard time figuring out the main ideas of readings over topics dealing with special education. I think a lot of the information is descriptive and, at points, is hard to limit what to count as “important”.