Adler and Van Doren's minimal bar of a college education is that it produce competent syntopical readers.

Gould, Jessica. “Teachers College, Columbia U. Dissolves Program behind Literacy Curriculum Used in NYC Public Schools.” Gothamist, September 8, 2023. https://gothamist.com/news/columbia-university-dissolves-program-behind-literacy-curriculum-used-in-nyc-public-schools.

The Teachers College of Columbia University has shut down the Lucy Calkins Units of Study literacy program.

Missing from the story is more emphasis on not only the social costs, which they touch on, but the tremendous financial (sunk) cost to the system by not only adopting it but enriching Calkins and the institution (in a position of trust) which benefitted from having sold it.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/eicbpgSKEe6vc0fPdIm05w

This may be an interesting use case for artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT which can provide the reader of complex material with simplified synopses to allow better penetration of the material (potentially by removing jargon, argot, etc.)

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

Calkins' Units of Study curriculum has been estimated to be used by nearly 25% of the 67,000 elementary schools in the United States in 2023.

Columbia University Teachers College education professor Lucy Calkins, a leader of the "balanced literacy" teaching philosophy in reading, has been influential in how millions of children have been learning to read for decades.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221202202544/https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-11-25-press-play-isn-t-a-teaching-strategy-why-educators-need-new-methods-for-video

https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/

Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?

https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/help/read

via

Inspired by @cicatriz's Fractal Inquiry and SuperMemo's Incremental Reading, I imported into @RoamResearch a paper I was very impressed (but also overwhelmed) by a few years ago: The Knowledge‐Learning‐Instruction Framework by @koedinger et al. pic.twitter.com/oeJzyjPGbk

— Stian Håklev (@houshuang) December 16, 2020

Hence, researchers are very active at the present time, and their work has resulted in numerous new approaches to reading instruction. Among the more important new programs are the so-called eclectic approach, the individualized reading approach, the language-experience approach, the various approaches based on linguistic principles, and others based more or less closely on some kind of programmed instruction. In addition, new mediums such as the Initial Teaching Alphabet ( i.t.a. ) have been employed, and sometimes these involve new methods as well. Still other devices and programs are the "total immersion method," the "foreign-language-school

Have we ultimately come to the conclusion that neurodiversity means there is no one-size-fits all solution? Should we also be placing some focus on orality and memory methods to allow those to flourish as well? Where is the literature on "orality pedagogy"? Is it a thing? It should be...

Du Boulay, 1999; Saltmarsh & Saltmarsh, 2008<br /> Noticing that they've left these references off of the end of the paper.

If we measure what we care about, why don't we do more grading and assessment of students' evidence of reading in addition to their writing? If we looked more closely at note taking and understanding first and foremost, would the ultimate analysis sort itself out? Instead we look only at the end products instead of the process. Focus more on the process and first class work here and the results will take care of themselves.

cross reference:

take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves (see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_care_of_the_pennies_and_the_pounds_will_take_care_of_themselves)

Hypothes.is “Are Your Students Doing the Reading? Seven Strategies for Motivating Students to Complete the Course Reading.” Hypothes.is, August 22, 2022. https://docdrop.org/pdf/Are-Your-Students-Doing-the-Rea---Hypothes.is-gaulj.pdf/

Modeling annotation and note taking can allow students to see that their voices matter in conversation with the "greats" of knowledge. We can and should question authority. Even if one's internal voice questions as one reads, that might be enough, but modeling active reading and note taking can better underline and empower these modes of thought.

There are certainly currents within American culture that we can and should question authority.

Sadly some parts of conservative American culture are reverting back to paternalized power structures of "do as I say and not as I do" which leads to hypocrisy and erosion of society.

Education can be used as a means of overcoming this, though it requires preventing the conservative right from eroding this away from the inside by removing books and certain thought from the education process that prevents this. Extreme examples of this are Warren Jeff's control of religion, education, and social life within his Mormon sect.

Link to: - Lawrence Principe examples of the power establishment in Western classical education being questioned. Aristotle wasn't always right. The entire history of Western science is about questioning the status quo. (How can we center this practice not only in science, but within the humanities?)

My evolving definition of active reading now explicitly includes the ideas of annotating the text, having a direct written conversation with it, questioning it, and expanding upon it. I'm not sure I may have included some or all of these in it before. This is what "reading with a pen in hand" (or digital annotation tool) should entail. What other pieces am I missing here which might also be included?

Teaching reading strategies to students improves their overall academic performance, but this instruction is often limited to developmental reading or study skills courses.

ref: Saxby, Lori Eggers. “Efficacy of a College Reading Strategy Course: Comparative Study.” Journal of Developmental Education 40, no. 3 (2017): 36-38.

Using Hypothes.is as a tool in a variety of courses can help to teach reading strategies and thereby improve students' overall academic performance.

Active reading to the extreme!

What a clever innovation building on the ideas of the art of memory and Raymond Llull's combinatoric arts!

Does this hit all of the areas of Bloom's Taxonomy? I suspect that it does.

How could it be tied more directly into an active reading, annotating, and note taking practice?

Manuela Macedonia's research indicates that online learners who enact specific gestures as they learn words learn better and have longer retention versus simply hearing words. Students who mimic these gestures also learn better than those who only see the gestures and don't use them themselves.

How might this sort of teacher/avatar gesturing be integrated into online methods? How would students be encouraged to follow along?

Could these be integrated into different background settings as well to take advantage of visual memory?

Anecdotally, I remember some Welsh phrases from having watched Aran Jones interact with his cat outside on video or his lip syncing in the empty spaces requiring student responses. Watching the teachers lips while learning can be highly helpful as well.

Should active reading, thinking, and annotating also include making gestures as a means of providing more clear reasoning, and drawing better inferences from one's material?

Would gestural movements with a hand or physical writing be helpful in annotation over digital annotation using typing as an input? Is this related to the anecdotal evidence/research of handwriting being a better method of note taking over typing?

Could products like Hypothes.is or Diigo benefit from the use of digital pens on screens as a means of improving learning over using a mouse and a keyboard to highlight and annotate?

because, of course, you've got to read the digital version of this book!

Two Iron Laws of College Reading https://crookedtimber.org/2021/12/22/two-iron-laws-of-college-reading/

An awesome looking annotation tool that dovetails with Zotero to invite students and readers into texts with annotations.

Demonstrated by Axel Dürkop at the Social Hour: Annotate This Party With Annotation Show-and-Tell

I'm wondering how people of various stripes like this and other versions may or may not relate to the variety of mnemotechniques out there.