Charlie Reade Smart

Decision

Recently in my religion 101 class we moved onto a new unit, Islam. For this unit we were assigned to read the novel Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. It is a 500 page novel taking place in Egpyt during its British occupation; it follows the lives of a typical Egyptian family of the period and the Islamic culture of the time. This was all swell until my TA told me that I would have to read up to page 195 for the next week, so the lecture on readings in CLS could not have come at a better time. I chose to use the Charlie Reade Smart strategy because this type of reading is much more comprehensive, and I felt more comfortable with this big of a reading assignment to split it up into chunks.

Prep and Application

To start off I had to split the readings into sections for myself that worked with my attention span and schedule, but before I could even create my schedule I had to find out what all of my readings for all of my classes were for at least the next week. Once I had taken note of my various readings it was time to create my schedule. I made a list of all the days in the week and split my reading list into chunks for each day. Now when I use my planner I just write ‘do readings’, so I can just look at my schedule and see what I need to do rather than write out each reading individually.

The next part was actually reading. In my religion 101 class we have been discussing Islam, particularly Islam in Egypt, so I decided to create a reading guide to keep track of and help me find examples of the main themes we talk about in class and the themes of the book.

I’m still in the exposition of this book so I still have to learn an excess of characters and key locations. To keep track of the main and minor characters I decided to create a family tree. The Family Tree has all the main characters and their important traits, as well as a few minor characters attached to the side. Since there is so much reading I thought this would help me so I never had to keep looking back to remind myself who a character was and not waste time.

Evaluation

I think that this reading strategy was extremely effective for me. I thought that the organization would be the most helpful part; however, the most effective strategy I used was the graphic organizer since I am a more visual learner. The action it took was very minimum to set up the Charlie Reade Smart strategy for my large reading assignment, maybe twenty minutes at the most. In the end I only used three basic materials: My reading schedule, my reading guide, and my character sheet. My evaluation of this overall is very positive. I think I will continue to use this method, yet I might add jeopardy questions from the lecture to answer while I read.