TART and Charlie Reads SmarT Strategies

Hey everyone!

So for this week, I decided to use both the TART and Charlie Reads SmarT reading strategies for my PSY 205 class. I chose these two strategies because I thought that they would help me effectively read and learn how to prepare test questions.

PSY 205 is my only lecture course where reading the textbook is suggested in order to understand the material better. Although reading is not required in this course, I thought it be best if I read the textbook before lectures for clarification and review. Our professor provides us with outlines on Blackboard before the lectures so I took the time to quickly scan them to see what would be most important to read. We don't need to read everything within the textbook, so that is why I skimmed through the lecture outlines beforehand.

For this week's reading, I read parts of Chapter 7, which was about intelligence. For the TART strategy, the first step was to read the terms and definitions in the chapter's glossary. I skimmed through the chapter and highlighted the terms with their definitions; abbreviating the most important ones. Since I am a visual learner, highlighting key terms was really effective.
Here are two pages from my textbook where I abbreviated and highlighted key terms:





The second step was to attend the lecture. I listened for the terminology used by my professor that I found in the textbook. During class, I highlighted the terms in the lecture outlines that were also mentioned in the textbook. Here are two examples from my notes:



The next step was to read the chapter to review what was covered in class. I highlighted anything else that seemed important to know.

The last step was to create test questions that I thought my professor might ask on future exams. I used the same questions from Charlie Reads SmarT strategy.

For the Charlie Reads SmarT strategy, I had to do the following:

1. Chunk the reading assignment
2. Read with a purpose
3. Summarize
4. Test

For the first step, I had to determine my attention span. I started to read until I felt to lose focus. I determined that I could read 5 pages, so for every section I read 5 pages then took a break before continuing to read. I had to read 20 pages in all and there were also certain sections that I did not need to read because they were parts that my professor would not go over. This really helped me keep focus and understand the reading better.

According to my syllabus, we would spend two days going over the intelligence chapter. For this week, I only had to read half of Chapter 7. While reading, I took note of the topic and turned the headings into questions. There were already questions concerning the topics at the head of each section, so I used them because my professor would most likely use them as questions on tests. Upon reading, I wrote down the answer to each question. I also took note of key terms within each section.

After reading, I combined the summarize and test steps by creating an outline organized by section and topic with questions and key terms. Since I am a visual learner, I highlighted the answers and key terms. I wanted my outline to be visually appealing.

Here is the outline I created:





I thought that the Charlie Reads SmarT strategy was more effective for me compared to TART because it helped me clarify and review important definitions within the textbook. TART helped me get an understanding of what the reading was going to be about.