For A Good Start---Use T.A.R.T.

For this week's tech assignment, I chose to use the T.A.R.T. technique to assess my reading challenges. This method compiles four stages to tackle any reading assignment.
Number 1: Terms:
Tells us to read the terms and definitions and then create abbreviations for the terms you expect your teacher to test you about later on an exam.
Number 2: Attend:
We now attend our lectures and reread the lecture notes after taking them.
Number 3: Read:
Now, actually read the chapter for clarification about the lecture as a whole.
Number 4: Test:
Finally, create test questions that you anticipate to be on the exams and answer the questions to the best of your ability.

I chose to apply this strategy to two classes in which I readily use my textbook:
Human Sexuality and Religion

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For Human Sexuality, I was assigned a full chapter to read for a week. I went to the beginning of the chapter and reviewed each of the terms found in the front of the chapter, so that way I would know what exactly to look for and what I would expect to see. The most major terms I saw, I jotted down and tried to memorize before I began to take on the reading.

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Human Sexuality only meets once a week, so I attended my lecture and listened very attentively, taking rigorous notes for the entire three hour length of the class. The next day after I got home from lecture and sleep, I immediately reviewed my notes, and even typed them up onto my laptop before going for the textbook reading notes.

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Finally, I challenged the thing I avoided the most: reading the actual textbook chapter. I panned through the entire thing, reading every section in the chapter and jotting down what I thought would be important and relevant to my exam.

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I then, to conclude this process, created test questions directly from my lecture and textbook notes. These were questions that I anticipated my teacher to ask on the exam. I then answered them with help from the textbook, online, peers, and even my teacher.

I similarly applied these four steps to my Religion 101 class.
I read the terms in BOLD in the entire chapter before reading the full assignment as a whole.
Then, I attended my class (which wasn't really a lecture) and took very detailed notes about my class presentations and teacher's power points. Then, right after class, I went back to my dorm and read all my detailed notes from class.
The next day, I began to read the textbook for class. I skimmed through quickly and jotted down major, key importances in each chapter.
Lastly, I created large essay test questions for my final exam for each religion and specific terms and facts about each religion.

The challenging part of this assignment for me was actually doing the reading. I am a Kinesthetic learner, and I much prefer a hands-on explanation, rather than something that I have to visually process, focus on, and remember.
It is also very hard for me to create all these notes accumulatively in an organized manner; I did my best, shown in the images all the way above.


The T.A.R.T. method worked well for me once I actually memorized and well understood the steps. It was tedious at first to make sure I was doing the right thing on schedule every time I started to read a new assignment...
Eventually though, I found this method very helpful and I will hopefully use it many times in the future.