Thread by @raulpacheco

THREAD: On reading, note-taking, synthesizing and writing.

It's the beginning of a new semester and year, and folks are looking for multiple sources to help their students with reading strategies, note-taking techniques, synthesizing-and-literature-reviewing, and writing.

I was in a meeting today discussing a potential professional development workshop for graduate students, where I indicated my approach to teaching academic writing (and everything else re: #AcWri) hinges on 3 building blocks:

1) How to read
2) How to synthesize
3) How to write

You may notice that I have shrunk my Reading-Annotating-Synthesizing-Writing (RASW) structure to a RSW framework. It's not really compressed, but I summarized Reading-and-Annotating as solely Reading. In my view, reading needs to be active, requires coordination and NOTE-TAKING.

In an ideal environment, I teach Reading, Annotating (Note-Taking), Synthesizing/Absorbing and Writing (this is often a semester-long course). When asked to shrink this curriculum, I teach 3 building blocks (Active Reading, which includes Note-Taking, Synthesizing and Writing).

I have organized my blog Resources focusing on those areas where I believe students, educators, practitioners and ECRs might require help: raulpacheco.org/resources/

If you are REALLY pressed for time (that is, you are trying to teach this WITHIN a class you are teaching)

If REALLY pressed for time (trying to teach this WITHIN a class you are teaching) you can do a couple of things:

1) Have your students browse through my Resources:

Reading raulpacheco.org/resources/read…

Note-Taking
raulpacheco.org/resources/note…

Writing: raulpacheco.org/resources/acad…

Or, if you have literally next to zero time to teach this, share these 3 blog posts that summarize RASW:

1) A template using my AIC super quick reading method raulpacheco.org/2021/01/skimmi…

2) My Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) approach to summarizing the literature/readings done:
raulpacheco.org/2016/06/synthe…

3) My Writing by Memos (WbM) strategy to building an academic writing practice raulpacheco.org/2020/04/writin…

These 3 blog posts should give your students a quick

... overview of what they need to do in order to build a writing practice that includes reading systematically, taking notes in an ordered manner, and synthesizing what they have read in an organized fashion.

Obviously, your students can also spend a week or so reading my blog.

But this quick map of how you can use my blog with undergraduate and graduate students should be helpful as you start a new semester.

Final thoughts: remember, a lot of this requires practice. Be gentle with your students and with yourself.

Good luck!

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