MetaCognitive Reading – Welcome to the Monkey House – First Reading - Reads like butter.

My first installment reading of Welcome to the monkey house, Who am I, reads like butter. This is the type of text I just fly through. This text creates no problem for me. I just accept what I read and don’t question. My metacognitive strategy for reading fiction, novels, plays, short stores is diferent than my metacognitive strategy for reading nonfiction. Fiction is suppose to be all imagery; let the imagination run free, have fun, relate all experiences to my own. This is the type of text I take on vacation, read in my backyard in the summer, take to the park, read on the plane, curl up to and use to escape. Better than a movie, my favorite TV show or the internet. It is all me when I read. I emerse in the text. Which character am I?

I love the imagery of the beautiful girl behind the counter of the phone company P16&17. It is rich with detail; “her blue eyes, comparing her to a machine, numb, wondering if she was interested in anything at all”. How many times have we seen that girl behind the proverbial counter of life and have casted her as a bit player in our own proverbial “play” of life. I was able to put a face on her immediately. I think I knew her once. I use picturing and connections.

How about my actor friend, Harry Nash p18. He reminds me of so many people I have known or met in my life. He was “huge, handsome, conceited and cruel”. He too I was able to put a face to right away. I think he dates one of my lady friends. Me and my girl friend laugh.

This type of text I read with a different metacognitive strategy than nonfiction text; I use picturing and making connections. There are no fixups, problems, or predicting going on in this metacogintve process of mine. No googling required, maybe an occasional word to lookup (fixup) but then again most text is written for the average reader, all the words are familiar to me. Re-Reads? Did I miss a detail in my canvass?. Predicting is a “no no”; why spoil the ending or second guess myself. Its time to give the mind a rest and let it be playful. The text just roles off my lips. I am busy and mindful making connections, recalling experiences and relishing in the imagery in full color. To me this type of text is what reading is all about; effortless, inviting, calming, filled with emotion and making new literary friends through characters. Whatever I was feeling or was experiencing before reading the text, just got tuned out. Best medicine in the world.

Another journey through self-awareness.. who am I.. reads like a hot knife thru better...effortlessly

Math Anxiety MetaCognitive Processing (decompressing) - How I learned to ride my bike - the third time is the charm.

The third part of the text attempts to interpret the results of the math anxiety questionnaire. This part is about as confusing as text can get because of the exceptions and conditions around the interpreted results which is common in these types of readings. I already have a “template” of meta-cognitive strategy that I developed over the years. In this blog I am attempting to step back and observe what metacognitive skills I used to develop my “template”. They say the third time is the charm.

On page 61, the text states that questionnaire responses were scored 1 to 3, where 1 was the least anxious. The dimensionality of the math anxiety scores were analyzed using factor analysis. I do not know what the factor analysis is but the next pararaph seems to expand on that by saying that two items were excluded form the analysis; “doing math and sums in general” and “division with big numbers”. I found this confusing because essentially isn’t that what math is? Decompressing I refer to this as my "what the #!%?" metacognitive strategy. I guess I am using the“identifying a problem” meta-cognitive skill. Anyway not agonizing over it  I do a quick “re-read” just to make sure I read the word "excluded" correctly and re-read the sentence structure to make sure I read it correctly (adverbs, nouns and adjectives all read in the right order). I just push forward with the next sentence, not judging or belaboring. I guess this is an example of “fix-up”. A rose by any other name….

On page 63 the text starts to talk about “principal component analysis”, of which I had no idea what they were talking about. Here comes my meta-cognitive strategy. A quick look on google tells me it is referred to as PCA, an “orthogonal matrix”.  Wow, now I know another acronym PCA. I can say PCA and sound like I know what I am talking about. Boy, do I love math. Now don’t get me wrong I'm no Einstein (far from it) I still dont know what the article is talking about. I have now  entered that world of math that everyone cringes and gets headaches and runs away. I just do the next google search for “orthogonal matrix”. Thank god for wikipedia. Now it tells me it is nothing more than matrix manipulation of numbers. Now this is where I stop looking. I have found my connection. It did not take me long. Two searches on google until I hit familiar territory and envision matrix manipulation. I made a visual connection to PCA that I understand. Now I get the picture….

Matrix manipulation
                       | 1  2  3 |                                | 1  2 |
   matrix a      | 4  5  6 | times  matrix b      | 3  4 |
                                                                     | 5  6 |
Do I need to understand everything about “principal component analysis”. No! My 80/20 rule works just fine. I just need to get a simple picture of matrix manipulation of numbers to remove nagging questions in my mind about what “principal component analysis” is, and move on to read fresh text. Hmm.. I guess I am using “making connections” and “picturing”. 

On page 67, the article mentions, unidimensional, dimensional and multidimensional anxietiety factors (ie, testing, social, cultural, language, Can-Do schools vs Non-Do schools), but does not elaborate on their impact on the study. I call this my “nice to know” meta-cognitive strategy. I don’t belabor it. I just tuck it away in the back of my mind. I guess this is my version of using a “fix-up” (read on, persevere in some other way)’  

Finally the conclusions of math anxiety ( p68), this is really what the article is all about. The conclusion states a traditional approach to teaching math caused more anxiety than an alternative approach to teaching math. The alternative approach emphasizes that working in groups helps support social norms which enables pupils to express their ideas without risk of embarrassment or humiliation. No surprises here. This pretty much is the outcome I expected. Sounds like the metacognitive strategy “predicting” to me.

Interesting, I was able to decompress and re-step how I rode my first bike.

Now I see the light...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRtAJy2nFVM
          

MetaCognitive 2nd third text Math Anxiety

The second/third of the reading text for “Childrens Mathematical Anxiety” continues with discussing the framework and methodology that will be used in the “Mathematics Anxiety Questionaire”.  The text deals with characterizing teaching approaches. The text talks about traditional (pupils are taught standard pencil-and-paper methods of computation taught by the teacher followed by individual practice) and alternative (pupils use and discuss their own strategies to solve routine and non-routine problems using small groups) approaches. The article goes further to discuss math classroom observation strategies and in particular four categories that wil be used (Context, Teaching Organization, Verbal Interaction Analysis and Cognitive Level).

The readings now are not so much about math, but are about the actual classroom implementation and strategy of using a questionnaire to determine and understand “anxiety” outcomes. This is the part of math that interests me the most because it factors in two very important motivators for me (remember motivators from my first 1/3 of text reading?). The first motivator satisfies my need to be an “arm-chair” psychiatrist observing human behavior and the second motivator to apply math (in this case statistics) to a tangible and real world application.

I have to admit the readings now are quite intense for two reasons. One is now I am more aware of metacognitive skills and I find that I am crowding my mind with a lot of noise over analyzing how I am reading text. I was better off when my process for reading text was automatic and second nature and I was engaging my metacognitive skills subconciously in the background.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss. The second factor that added to the intensity of the reading was that the observations themselves become “mathematical anxiety” issues because the observations are dependent on the pupils skills and the size of the student populations observed. Here is where the reading gets tough. There is lots of room for interpretation that is going on in my mind so I draw upon experiences and familiarities to navigate me through muddy waters. It is with these type of readings that I use the 80/20 rule. That is I will pick up most of the information being presented (80%) by absorbing 20% of the reading. I may go back and re-read but only if I know what I need to re-read for. Most of the time my 80/20 rule approach works. I donot get anxious if I donot get or understand everything. I’ve learned over the years to be kind to myself; no need to beat myself up. No one is an expert or perfect the first time around when learning or reading something new.           

EDS654 Metacognitive text reading

The text I chose to use for this assignment is an article called “Aspects of Children’s Mathematics Anxiety” by Karen Newstead. The article basically tries to give some understanding and rational to a topic referred to as ‘mathematical anxiety’ that has received considerable attention among researchers and mathematic educators in recent years.

With that said, there are two reasons why I chose this article. The first is that I am very curious when I teach math to understand the “phobia” that students display. The second reason I chose this article is that I enjoy being an armchair psychologist and attempt to understand the inner working of the mind. Because of the reasons why I chose this article I read this text a certain way. I read the text primarily picturing and making connections. Keep in mind the approach I used to read this text may be totally different than an approach I may take to read a different text or a text I donot enjoy or content I donot understand.

The first 8 pages of the text talks about “facilitative” and “deliberative” types of anxiety experienced by young adolescent in the classroom and their teachers experiences. I can easily envision the students’ anxious faces and distant stares in a typical math classroom setting and the teachers’ puzzlement trying to get the material across to the student. I can see the anxiety of the student and the quietness of the classroom for those questions that need to be surfaced but are afraid to be asked. I can also very easily picture myself as both the student and the teacher of math to round out the experience of anxiety from both ends.

This type of metacognitive content area reading makes me comfortable, engaged and personalized with the reading experience. It makes the reading playful, entertaining and very insightful. I connect very easily and pictures surface in my mind constantly. This is truly one of those reading moments when mental pictures are worth a thousand words. It easy to grasp what is being read. I literally have conversations in my mind alongside of the reading. My metacognitive experience with this text was exploding with sight, sound and imagination.