Since we’re coming to the end of the school year, I thought it would be a good idea to share one more video about skimming with you. Textbooks can be a fantastic resource for our students as they prepare for finals–IF they use them the right way.

Today I’ll share a powerful skimming technique that allowed me to skim through 80 pages of a new book in only 40 MINUTES! 

Want to know how I did it? Sneak Peak: It has to do with the direction I chose to skim…

So buckle up and let’s learn a skill that can completely transform how our students (and we!) interact with our books. Click below to watch the video…or read on for the summary.

In this video, I recapped how I skimmed 80 pages of a book in just 40 minutes.

[Wanna’ know a secret? I think I made these videos on skimming because I’d rather make a video than actually do the hard work of skimming!]

Okay…so the SECRET to my being able to skim so many pages so quickly is…I skimmed from the back of the book to the front!

I employ the Do / Notice loop here that I introduced in last week’s video. The Doing was the skimming…now we’ll Notice about the doing.

Here’s my summary of why I think skimming from the back of the book to the front was successful:

• Incites curiosity
• Puts the brain in puzzle-solving mode
• Forces prediction
• Focuses me on my autonomy (I get to skim MY way)
• Saves time by cutting out what I don’t need (by not going front to back and thereby following the author’s narrative, I get to decide what’s important and what I don’t need to pay attention to)

So what do you think? Is there something I missed about why skimming back to front might be the better way?

I’m also curious if you have concerns or worries about what you might be missing out on by going backwards to forwards. Whatever your thoughts are, please post them below.

And, if you want to see my Anti-Boring Approach secrets to the neuroscience of learning, click here to get a special free gift!