I think active, critical reading has been something I have always struggled with. I can usually make it through one full page before I find myself skimming the rest and just looking for parts that I think are important. I have to force myself to actually take my time to go through the article and really read it, not just skim. I think that this class helped me improve my active reading skills because I was forced to annotate and comprehend what I was reading, not just get the gist of the readings. I think what helped me the most was being able to hear and see my peers’ active reading techniques at the beginning of the semester. It gave me some ideas to try and I ended up finding a method I really liked and works well for me. Now when I am reading an article I start by reading the entire page, then I go back paragraph by paragraph highlighting pieces I think are important or interesting. After that, I like to give a little blurb about each paragraph or big idea to help summarize the article for me. I continue this process throughout the entire article. I focus on marking ideas or aspects that I think are important to the overall idea of the article and will help further my understanding. I think this method helps me when we are discussing in class because I can look back and quickly remember parts that I related to, agreed or disagreed with, or just thought were interesting. It is helpful to jog my memory when discussing ideas presented in the article and make connections to my peers’ comments and thoughts in the discussion.