Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

Introduction:

I have been dealing with reading and analyzing difficult texts for the last five years. When annotating, I always keep in mind the three modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Like Susan Gilroy asked, “What does this mean? Why is the author drawing that conclusion? Why am I being asked to read this text?” breaking apart the papers into ethos, pathos, and logos allows me to answer these questions easier. This is a skill I acquired during my junior year in high school in my AP English Language and Composition class. I use these three modes as a basis to start off my annotating. Then, when I am done annotating the texts based on the modes, I reread the text and have a conversation with the text by picking out questions, statements, interesting ideas, and/or relatable ideas.

After I began rereading a difficult text more than once, I noticed my comprehension was a lot better. Before, I used to just read a text without really thinking much about the real meaning and purpose behind the text. As Gilroy stated “Take the information apart, look at its parts,” I would only read what was on the surface and I never understood the text which lead to me becoming frustrated and I would give up. However, now that I reread the text and have a conversation with it, I have become a lot more engaged and interested in the text. 

For example, when I was analyzing “Journeying Through The Hawaiian Archipelago,” I annotated for any questions I had, anything I found interesting, and any connections I had to my personal life or something I had previously read. On page 30, I made my first annotation which was a connection to my personal life. I noticed that George Bush designed the NWHI as a Marine National Monument and I instantly became interested because I grew up a town over from the Bush Compound in Kennebunkport, ME. On page 31, I also made another connection to similar actions my school did when I was in elementary school. Every year, my class and I would take field trips to the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge in order to appreciate and learn more about the wildlife in our community. I questioned the text on page 32 because I didn’t exactly understand the interdisciplinary approaches that were being made. I would have liked examples to explain further what the author meant.

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Journal Entry:

The major ideas in this article covered place-based learning and marine science. Marine science programs have been showing a decline in enrollment; to solve this, the Hawaiin Institute of Marine Biology, HIMB, promotes marine biology to the Hawaiian community and school systems. President Bush designated the NWHI as the marine national monument to educate marine science from school children to seniors. Due to liability risks, far travels and budget, the students cannot go outside of the classroom to explore. HIMB partnered with other communities to enhance learning through pen pals. Interactive activities were used to help promote marine biology awareness. Students and community members found a sense of place after HIMB promoted ongoing research. 

This article helps students be more aware of the marine biology department and how important awareness and knowledge of a subject can be. After being exposed to activities with marine biology, students showed a 50% change in their opinion of the importance of science. Mural paintings were used to express the students learning over the marine biology course. These findings can be applied to other school systems to help promote declining departments of study. If a field is showing a decline in enrollment, the community or institution can educate the students about the topic and interests that can arise. 

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Sign Posts:

While annotating “Journeying Through The Hawaiian Archipelago” my three main categories of annotations consisted of questions, interesting facts, and connections. Questions (Q) can be about material that doesn’t make sense or something that I want to learn more about. For interests (I), these can be something I didn’t understand before, but now you do, or something that I never realized until reading. When annotating for connections (C), I connect the text I am reading with other texts, places, or make an analogy to my own life or community.

Q1: “Nonetheless, new learning opportunities that…” (31) *What opportunities? I think it would be more beneficial to list out some of the learning opportunities.*

Q2: “The HIMB NWHI outreach effort…” (32) *What are the interdisciplinary approaches? What does that exactly mean?*

Q3: “The program encouraged reef stewardship…” (33) *What is stewardship?*

I1: “Using the local geography to…” (31) *Just informing sparks interest– listing out the ways of how to communicate the importance of marine science is effective in having the reader understand specific examples.*

I2: “HIMB activities create connections between…” (32) *This was interesting to see the impact between human activities and mindsets with ecosystems.*

I3: “For example, the recent partnership…” (32) *Cultural exchanges are occurring between schools because of this. Washington-> Hawaii.*

C1: “In June of 2006, then…” (30) *George Bush-> personal connection to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport; a town over from my home town.*

C2: “The HIMB NWHI outreach effort…” (31) *This is similar to what my elementary and junior high did. I remember taking field trips to Rachel Carson Wildlife Reserve and Laudholm Farm.

C3: “Career days also reach hundreds…” (32) *Reminds me of the career fairs that were held in my high school, I actually found a job from one of these fairs.*

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