Is fighting to stay awake while reading a problem for you (or your teen)?
Based on my experience as an academic life coach for students, you are definitely not alone!
The other day, a client asked me how I managed to stay awake while reading. I was so inspired by what we came up with that I quickly made this video. I hope it’s helpful to you!
Don’t have time for the full video? No worries, here’s a short summary:
I had a couple of clients today, each having trouble getting through major pieces of literature in their English class. One of them is reading Great Expectations and the other is reading The Great Gatsby. Both of them wanted to know, “How can I not fall asleep while I’m reading? And also, how can I really get something out of the reading so I can do well in class and on the test?” What we discussed was how Sparknotes could help them both.
With the young man reading The Great Gatsby he had already been reading SparkNotes after he read a chapter. However, we came to the conclusion that it would benefit him to look at the analysis section of the Sparknotes for each chapter before reading the book. This way he will know what sort of themes are in that chapter and what to be looking for. I also suggested that he keep a bookmark tucked into his book with a list of questions that they have been discussing in class, so he knew also what sort of information he should be looking for. Then the last thing we did, was that after he finished reading the analysis on Sparknotes, I had him just run his finger down the pages of the chapter in the book and just see what words popped out at him. This helped him sort of see how the chapter was mapped out, and combined with everything else helped him to really know what themes, analogies, keywords, etc he should be looking for so he could get a good understanding of the book as he read it.
Now with The Great Expectation, we found that this young woman could really benefit from mapping out the characters in the book. And, similar to the first young man, she’ll be reading the Sparknotes before each chapter; however, she’ll only be doing it to see which characters are going to come up in that chapter. So she’ll be drawing out, in a circle chart, the characters, and then before each chapter, she’ll be checking which characters will be in them. This will help her keep track of the characters in each chapter since The Great Expectation has such a large roster of characters.