TEXTBOOK MARKING - csu.edu

from http://www.csupomona.edu/~crsp/handouts/marking_textbook.html MARKING YOUR TEXTBOOK Reading is an active process. Mark your text, take notes, and write notes in the margins. Marking or annotating a text is your response to what you are reading, and it might prove valuable to you later as you begin to organize and plan your essay. Marking a text is not the same thing as highlighting or underlining words: marking a text is your way of discovering what you find important, what you want to explore, and/or what puzzles you about a text. Think of this process as having a dialogue with a text. Although the text cannot speak verbally, the written words communicate – sometimes the meaning is clear, while other times it is not. Your response, talking back to a text, can take place in your mind and also on the pages of text. As you underline, make notes in the margins, and raise questions, you are keeping a written record of your dialogue with the text. If you don’t record your reactions, the wonderful, insightful ideas or important questions you have while reading may be lost to you. If you annotate a text, you can return to it later to rethink what you consider important. There is no one perfect way to annotate a text. Indeed, people will mark a text in different ways. Because each person creates her or his own reading, each person will find different points interesting, complex, or worth noting. Review the following annotated texts. Two students marked up this selection from Bell Hooks’ essay “keeping close to home: class and education.” Note the similarities and the differences – how might a reader use these annotations as a way to come back to the text for subsequent readings? Before reading the following passage, turn to Hooks’ text. Read the headnote and skim the essay in order to place the passage in context as you review the annotations. Compare the two annotated texts. What does each annotator notice about the text? Are there patterns that emerge from the marking? Are there similarities between the two examples? Differences? What focus does each annotator seem to have? What are some issues each of these writers might explore in an essay about Hooks’ text? Notice that the annotations in each example are marked with specific meaning. Annotating a text is a technique to help you become a more thoughtful reader. There is a danger, however, of marking or highlighting too much. Many students highlight nearly an entire page of a text; this does not enable the writer to come back to what was important to her or him, it simply gives the student a yellow (or blue, or… ) page. Think of marking up your text as the beginning of your dialogue with a text, which will lead you to an extended writing project. In this dialogue, you will be doing most of the work because as you ask questions, bring up inconsistencies, or try to explore ideas more deeply, you have to rely on the text and your reasoning to respond to your inquiry. If you read a text more than once, and some of these texts will require more than one reading, note the ways in which your annotations change. What seemed so puzzling the first time around, may make more sense with subsequent readings, or you may discover why a particular section seemed so important to you. Clearing up one point may lead to another question or to a conclusion. Class or small group discussions may give you insights or raise more questions or spark an interest in something you had not noticed before. This is an exciting process. Marking up your text is an integral part of the process. Thinking about and reviewing your annotations can be crucial as you move on to more extended and sustained writing. Comfort, Carol. “Breaking Boundaries,” New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000.

TEXTBOOK MARKING Effective Mehods

TEXTBOOK MARKING

 It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.

                                                            Alec Bourne

 effective textbook marking

I.                   What is Textbook Marking?

II.                Deciding What to Mark

III.             Steps in the Process of Textbook Marking

·         Preview

·         Study-Read

·         Mark or Highlight Text

·         Write Margin Cues

IV.             Knowing How Much to Infer

V.                Developing a Personal System of Textbook Marking

VI.             Practice with Reading Passages

Textbook marking is:

·         a systematic mark-and-label reading tool that helps you distinguish important ideas from less-important ideas

·         a way to identify the main idea, important details and new vocabulary in your textbook chapters

·         a way to flag information that is unclear to you so you are reminded to clarify the information before you are tested

·         a personal system, which needs to be

·         consistent

·         makes sense to the individual student using it

·         achieves the main goal of showing relationships between ideas in textbooks

dIRECTIONS

Make one copy the reading following these directions (page 139) for each of your students, and have them mark, by highlighting or underlining, the main idea and the major supporting details.  Then, ask the following

exercise 10-1 & 10-2:  textbook marking check

Directions: Think about how you currently mark in your textbooks and answer the following questions:

1.      My margin notes are legible.                                                         Yes_____        No _____

2.      I write my notes in ink.                                                                 Yes _____       No _____

3.      I use a consistent format:  notes in paragraph form _____    sentences _____ phrases ____

4.      I create questions, using headings, visuals, etc.                            Yes ____         No _____

5.      I use abbreviations in my margin notes, such as 1,2,3, to indicate a process, MI for main idea, and EXfor examples.                                                                          Yes ____         No ____

6.      I effectively use abbreviations and I remember what they mean.            Yes ____         No _____

7.      I somehow identify new words.                                                   Yes ____         No ____

8.      I consistently identify the main idea in the paragraphs.                           Yes ____         No _____

9.      I clearly mark the items I don’t understand.                                Yes ____         No ____

10.  I consistently identify major supporting details.                          Yes _____       No _____

11.  I write summaries for each chapter to use as a study aid.            Yes ____         No ____

12.  I have developed a personal system of symbols.                          Yes ____         No ____

13.  I seem to know how much to mark; I don’t overmark.                Yes ____         No ____

14.  My grades have improved as a result of my textbook marking; studying is easier now that 

      I have identified what’s important.                                                Yes ____       No ____

.

supplemental vocabulary quiz

There is one supplemental vocabulary quiz for this chapter.

Answers for Crossword Puzzle

Chapter ten vocabulary QUIZ

Across

3              words that help you to identify main ideas, clues to main points

5              equal

7              participation in wrong

9              lively feeling with a slight edge

11           eloquent public speaker

15           a hormone, triggered by stress

16           humiliation

17           respecting

Down

1              unchanged, uncorrupted

2              little story

4              well spoken, articulate

5              systematic way of marking ideas in a textbook

6              visualization of successful actions

8              attacked

10           compelled

12           to send away

13           masked hoods worn by Afghan women

14           nonsense

Summary for “what is technology?”

Sample summary:

            Technology is the creation of new products and processes that are designed to improve our survival, comfort level, and quality of life.  It is developed from scientific knowledge and theories.  Some technologies arose before anyone understood or tested the principles that made them possible.  Scientific knowledge is often published, shared, and verified, unlike technological discoveries, which are often kept secret until they are patented.

-- 06-- Assumptions - Reasoning

--06-- Assumptions


TPCT Ch. 4: Reasons for Belief and Doubt



Video:  http://ctmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/Assumptions%20Video

 Assumptions / Inference Ladder Video

• Assumption -- Identify Hidden

• Assumptions and Inferences

Chapter Summary

Chapter Five Assumptions

This chapter concerns another familiar word, assumptions, demonstrating some surprising complexities in the term. Multiple exercises will show you how assumptions relate to facts and inferences, how they affect thinking, how they affect arguments, and how they might be exposed and clarified. You can choose to write an expository essay on assumption recognition and its role in creative problem solving. A reading by John Bul Dau points out some American cultural assumptions, while Kate Chopin and George Wallace show us the tragic consequences of assumptions of racial superiority. The critical thinker Will Allen shows us how creative problem solving results from spotting and challenging assumptions.

Glossary
Chapter 5
Accommodation	Accommodation occurs when, through thinking, we create new mental files or modify old ones to contain new experiences.
Assimilation	Assimilation is to succeed easily in filing new experiences into existing mental categories.
Assumption Layers	Assumption layers can appear beneath simple assertions. Such layers consist of multiple hidden and unexamined assumptions influenced in turn by one or more value assumptions beneath the whole.
Disequilibrium	The confusion and discomfort felt when a new experience cannot be aligned with previous experience or filed into existing mental categories.
Exposition essay	An essay designed primarily to explain something. Here facts are more important than opinions.
Hidden Assumption	A hidden assumption is an unclear and unstated idea assumed to be true that is integral to a line of reasoning. In an argument, it is a hidden premise that cannot be easily examined for truth and validity. Blind acceptance of a hidden premise can lead to the acceptance of a false or invalid conclusion.
Incongruity	Something that seems out of place or inappropriate.
Thesis	A thesis is a short summary statement of an idea that an essay intends to prove. It is also called the thesis statement and controlling idea.n
Value or Belief Assumption	Value assumption is a belief that we take for granted, one that rarely questioned or even articulated. Remaining hidden and unexpressed, a value assumption can nevertheless shape a chain of reasoning.
Working Assumption	A working assumption is a trial idea, theory, strategy, or hypothesis assumed to be true in order to further an investigation. It is a conscious assumption