This is it – the book bundle you purchase when you start the BC RN program. Maybe you got a box like this? Or you carried it from the bookstore in very heavy bags? Or you added to your collection one book at a time?
Then you start reading. And reading. And reading. Because we all know that one of the keys to success in this program is learning the material and that involves reading, right? (please say yes).
But, reading textbooks isn’t a favorite activity for most of us. It’s hard. We open the book, get ready to read, maybe even use a pencil or highlighter to keep us on track. After a sentence or two, our eyes stay with the words, but our minds start to wander. We get to the end of a paragraph or a section and think, “what did I just read?”
Recently, a colleague introduced me to some books on learning and I plan to do a series of posts that share some of the information from these books. Teach Yourself to Learn by Saundra Yancy McGuire is one of the books. 
McGuire gives some great advice on how to read course materials. I’m paraphrasing the author here, but if you check out the book, it’s on pages 44 – 46. There are three steps:
- Preview the material by first going through the section/chapter and looking just at the headings and any bold or italicized or highlighted text. This tells you what the reading is going to be about. Don’t start reading the text yet, just look at headings.
- After you’ve done that, think about what questions these headings and bold/italicized/highlighted texts have made you think about and write them down. This will give you something to focus on while reading, which will help you stay engaged with the material.
- After you done that, start reading. Read ONLY one paragraph at a time. At the end of each paragraph, stop reading and explain, in your own words, what you just read. This helps you remember it. Then, go on to the next paragraph and stop, explain what was said in that paragraph in addition to the previous paragraph. Read the next paragraph, stop, explain in your own words what was said in the two previous paragraphs, and keep repeating that.
I’m pretty interested in how we learn and I’m also pretty interested in finding ways for nursing students to have success, so I’ve been trying this out. For me, it works.
Try this out on a few paragraphs in your textbooks and let me know how it works for you – comment here or send me an email!