One of my grad school professors taught me how to read.

Okay, so I knew HOW to read (hold your snarky math teacher comments, English folk), but I didn’t realize I had no idea how to read for an academic context. For one of our very first assignments, our professor set up a very sneaky experiment that taught me I wasn’t reading very well. He told the whole class that for one of our more dense and academic readings for the next week*, one person would be randomly selected to lead a class-wide discussion. This was early on in a program with a group of 22 all-star, experienced educators. Very scary.

I was terrified into competency.

Instead of just reading it straight through and perhaps highlighting, I wrote questions in the margins, connected various parts of the text, made a list of the main ideas, pulled out quotes that could generate discussion, and generally actively thought about the content of the article.

It turned out he was bluffing, which he revealed in class the next week. Phew, *changes underwear*.  But with this exercise, he made the point to us that the way we read that article was totally different from the way we probably read most of the other stuff. And more effective. I was thankful for this because for the rest of grad school, I read much more effectively. Even if I didn’t have time to read an entire article, I would spend a bit of time diagramming, writing questions in the margins, and actively engaging with the content. Instead of expending more effort, I used my effort more effectively.

How did I make it through so many years of education without knowing how to read? How much more could I have gained from both my high school and college education? How does this apply to our math students? How many of them are trying to do better by working MORE instead of by working MORE EFFECTIVELY? What can we do to show the how to do homework?

What’s a good meta-assignment that can show students how to do math homework effectively (without making them sh*t some bricks to learn the lesson)?