In the selection from Susan Gilroy, she explains that you must get in the habit of asking yourself questions as you read. This is something that I struggled with coming into the semester. Through high school I had gotten into the habit of reading through excerpts without thinking about what I was reading. I would not try to pull the key ideas out of the reading. Susan Gilroy’s suggestion to ask yourself questions is something that I have focused on a lot this semester. I have found that when I ask questions as I read, I think about the text more. In my sample of active reading, you can see that I have many questions in the margins. These questions are things that I either need to look up after I finish reading, or things that I am asking myself so that I further understand the text. As I read, I ask myself how things connect to other readings so that it make more sense to me. In earlier active reading, you will not see as many marks in the margins. I would underline the text as a I read, but I would rarely write any questions. As the semester went on, I realized asking questions helped me learn more from the text. When writing my informal reading responses, I have noticed that when I asked more questions of the text, my responses were stronger. I was able to connect the text back to my life, my family, previous experiences, other texts, and more. Through these reading responses, I was able to show that I understood the text. If I had not asked questions of the text, I do not think my responses would have been as useful. As you will see in my reading responses, in response one I was not asking questions of the text. Because I was not asking any questions, I could not connect the text to anything, so my response was simply on the one idea. In response two, which was later in the semester, I had learned the importance of questioning what I was reading. I asked myself how I could connect what I read to my life. My second response was much stronger and showed how what I read connected to my life experiences.
Informal Reading Responses:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13RhTQy2a1JjOmQFQpkJ5mBbQVT6VnfhhjUyexo8nON8/edit
Annotated Text:
