By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. It’s normal to have bad feelings about annotating text. In my work with over 3,000 students, what I hear most often is some version of the following: Fair enough. Being forced to do something without understanding why is no fun. Doing …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. Annotating and note-taking are both school skills (and work skills!) that allow you to get more from the text you’re reading. But like with any skill, you need to know how and when to use it. In this blog post, I …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. It’s no secret that books contain some of the most valuable information in the world. From Greek mythology to religious texts, and diaries (Anne Frank!) to textbooks, our world relies on books to pass information to the next generation. If you …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. We’ve all been there. We’ve all saved our reading homework until the end of the day because we had to do the “real” homework first, but then we start falling asleep after just a few pages. Why does reading do this …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. There seems to be endless confusion around annotation techniques. “What do I highlight?” is one of the most common skill-based questions I’m asked, and so this blog post teaches you what to highlight when annotating novels. In a future blog post, …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. If you’re a student of any age, you’re going to read hard books for school. This is a fact of life. But whether you consider yourself a good reader or not, reading hard books will always take more effort and sometimes …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. Sometimes we have to read books we don’t like. Such is life. This post has eight strategies for how to get through required readings that you’re just not loving. Quick little PSA: If you’re reading a book for personal enjoyment and …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. From middle school through graduate school, being tested on what we read basically is school. Read a book, and then take a test: repeat forever. Therefore, knowing how to study for a test on a book is the key to doing …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. Knowing how to write a summary of a text is one of the most important skills for school and work. It’s even important outside of school, like in everyday conversations with people (Hey, what was that movie about? How’s that book …
By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed. Required summer reading often involves the same challenging books as school-year reading, but without all the teacher support and guidance along the way. For this reason, some middle and high school students who succeed with school-year reading will struggle to independently …