TART

Terms

Attend

Read

Test

I decided to try the TART reading strategy. I wanted to try it because I have a difficult time with reading material and fully understanding what it is I just read. I needed a new way to read something, take notes, and study what I read!

I tried this reading strategy in two courses. I tried it in my Math 121 and Hebrew 101. I tried it in these courses because they both require knowing a lot of definitions and terms. Math 121 isn't a lot of reading, its more problem solving but Hebrew 101 is. I wanted to try this strategy in a class that required reading comprehensively (Hebrew) and a class that required reading/ skim or scan the pages (Math).

In Math 121, I generally do not read the textbook before class. I normally go into class having no idea what I'm going to learn about. I take a lot of notes in class and then don't review them again until the day before a test. My notes generally look like this and are very unorganized.

After I tried the TART strategy, my notes looked more like this.

I wrote down the definitions- abbreviations. I then went to class and reread my lecture notes. After that I read the chapter to make sure I understood the material and created test questions. This helped me a lot because I am a visual learner. I was able to see the terms I'm going to need to know for my test before I went to class, take more notes in class and understand the reading in the textbook after class. I was then able to test myself with the test questions I made up having all these terms in front of my eyes.

I did the same thing for Hebrew 101.

Notes Before Notes After

Test Questions

The strategy worked better for my math class because I could write down the terms, create abbreviations, read the textbook to understand everything and create test questions easily. I had to make substitutions when I did it for my hebrew class. I couldn't make any abbreviations for hebrew words and so instead I wrote sentences next to some of the terms so that I would understand the words better and it would help me remember the words when I answered the test questions I created. I think this strategy is better for a class that you don't have to read comprehensively in because you don't have to write as detailed notes as you would if you needed to read extremely cautiously. I would definitely recommend this strategy to someone who needs help with taking notes and understanding reading material for class!