how catherine reads

A gem has been emerging in the comments thread on the SlideRules post. Catherine is telling us about how she reads.

I've known Catherine for about a year now, and I'm permanently amazed by her ability to sift through masses of reading matter, in print and on the internet, and find the best stuff to read in seemingly any and every field.

Go ahead: ask her what the best cookbooks are, the best books on knitting and psychology and film and graphic design. She knows. And anyone who hangs out here knows that she's digested a lot of the literature in math education, and even made sense of some of it; a feat that surely deserves some kind of serious prize.

Catherine is also quietly famous for bringing out the best in her co-authors. She's a gifted interviewer. And now I want to interview her! -- about how she reads. I'd really like to know, because I want to be able to read and comprehend a lot more than I seem able to absorb these days, and because I suspect that some of her techniques can help kids learn to really read as well.

The first shocker: Catherine writes in her books. In pencil, but she used to write in pen! She even used to write in different colors of pen!

I must have gotten smacked for writing in books a few times: I just don't know if I can make myself do it.

So what does she write?

I very frequently simply re-write what the author has written, in a shorter phrase, maybe.

Basically I'm making a kind of skeleton outline of the points I want to remember.

But I also write anything else that I want to remember, like associations to what the author has said.

If I think something is wrong, I'll write 'No!'

If I think something is super-right I'll write 'Yes!'

Let's see...

• I 'copy,' in probably the exact same sense you copied reading your math text
• I argue & evaluate
• I MAKE CONNECTIONS (YAY! as Christopher would say)
• I create my own PERSONAL index. All the white pages at the beginning and end of the book (if I need them) are covered in the page numbers that are important to me, along with a summary of what's there -- some of the pages have asterisks by them
• I also highlight the bibliography & footnotes

Catherine literally digests her books. I did that once or twice: first with my graduate math text that I almost copied -- I say 'almost' because I did a bit more than just copy it; I wrote notes and worked out little prooflets that the author omitted. And I was embarassed: I felt silly to be copying a book in my own handwriting.

More recently, I did it again with a book on Kalman filtering (I've been trying to understand Kalman filtering on and off for years; for some reason I find it a very slippery concept -- I just haven't grokked it yet). This book had a lot of gaps in it, so it was as much filling those in as it was copying. But I only read this way when I have to drag out the big guns and read something really hard.

Most of the other stuff I read has a tendency to get lost too quickly. How much more would I absorb if I read the Catherine Johnson way all the time? I'm going to give it a try and find out.

Here's another peek into Catherine's reading style, this time from the RUSSIAN MATH book:

Inside the front cover of RUSSIAN MATH, here are some typical things:

* page 18 'nice way of explaining prime factorization (this is noted because I want to remember the Russian way of doing prime factorization, and will want to review this page, but also because I'll probably want to write about why their way is good for teaching)

* page 6 "teaching factors & multiples together" I may have blogged about this already. I constantly confuse factors and multiples, which I realize must sound simply bizarre to math people. The Russian way of teaching them reminds me of de Saussure's dictum that all meaning comes from difference, because the Russians teach factors & multiples together, as OPPOSITES....giving me a kind of...I visualize a strong board or sturdy stick holding these two collapsing definitions apart inside my brain

* page 37 "easily transition from factor sequence (skip-counting) to equivalent fractions -- I'd have to look that up to see the details, but there, again, I'm making note of what was, for me, a fantastically good way of organizing content so that I SAW it, understood it, could do it on the problem set, and so on

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I was just over at Roger's site for the first time in a couple of weeks and I think you've got it all wrong. Catherine has to have a twin. This is the only answer. No one can cover so much ground so fast.

-- SusanS - 30 Jun 2005

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Golly, what a great way to start the day!

Re-reading my Russian math notes, they sound like gibberish--but they do make sense to me, still.

That's another thing I've had to learn to take care with, though: shorthand.

I have to think, 'a year from now, will I understand what I was thinking when I wrote this note?'

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Jun 2005

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It's strange; I don't know when and how I developed this skill (though, as I say, I definitely think it has come from being a nonfiction writer-slash-journalist).

Did I tell you my story about my sister?

It was hilarious (to me, that is).

I was bugging her to read some diet book or other, because she was worried about something related to diet....(I've forgotten what).

Finally she emailed me saying, 'I don't want to read the book. I want you to read the book and tell me what's in it.'

At first I thought she was being lazy, because, really, how much time does any of us have to read & absorb diet books at this point?

But then I realized she was saying that she wanted my 'take' on the book.

The funny thing is, I didn't have this ability when Jimmy was diagnosed. I was at sea for years and years and years; I had no 'map of the world'; I had no way of organizing all the info & theories & thoughts & observations that were coming at me.

When Shirley Cohen wrote her perfect, pristine little book, TARGETING AUTISM, she organized the entire field into two categories: developmental (Greenspan would be the 'core' guy here) and behavioral (Lovaas, obviously).

This was an immensely powerful organizing principle, which allowed me to see all kinds of other aspects of a treatment or philosophy as it related to one core set of ideas.

For instance, behaviorists, I now saw, really didn't care about developmental sequence.

If a child couldn't do 'stage b' they just moved on to 'stage c'--unthinkable to a developmentalist, who believes that a child progresses through a certain sequence of skills & abilities, and that he must progress through that sequence.

You can easily see where both camps are probably right.....and also where the two camps can be reconciled and not reconciled, etc....

I can't quite make my point here, but having a 'structuring opposition' didn't make me 'choose sides' (necessarily) but 'deepened' my knowledge of the whole big huge realm of autism, autism politics, autism treatment, autism research, and autism parental freak-out. (I was already an expert on parental freak-out.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Jun 2005

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I REALLY hope I can keep some coherent notes on all the math textbooks I'm working through.

I keep saying this, but we really don't have language for what happens when you FEEL yourself learning.

It's not even 'learning' that I'm talking about.....it's 'deepening.'

I 'know' elementary mathematics in the shallow, procedural sense. (I respect procedural knowledge; I'm not using the term in its pejorative sense.)

I think it's also true that there isn't a hard boundary between procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge. Strong procedural knowledge gives you some conceptual knowledge.

So when I carefully study an elementary mathematics textbook I'm not exactly 'learning.'

I'm 'deepening.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Jun 2005

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Oh!

I just realized what the core 'trick' may be.

When you approach a new field, find out what the fight's about.

Every field, every single human endeavor on the planet, has a battle going on, with two sides duking it out for all eternity, it seems.

(It really is two sides, I think! Binary opposition! Claude Levi-Strauss was right!)

Find out what the fight's about, and you've got it.

You can proceed!

AND...this gets back to deSaussure and his idea that all meaning comes from 'difference.'

IIRC, he meant difference in the sense of opposites.

'Cat' only has meaning when you have 'dog,' too.

I'm now actively trying to use that principle for math learning & teaching.

Don't teach factors and then, later on, teach multiples.

Teach them together, as opposites.

Singapore Math seems to teach the operations this way. They don't teach addition, then, later on, subtraction. (I think.) They teach subtraction as the inverse of addition.

This is the one worry I have about Saxon Math, btw.

Because it breaks subjects down into the tiniest possible unit.....I don't think Saxon spends a lot of time contrasting today's 'increment' with its equal-and-opposite increment, though I may be wrong.

I think I sometimes add in the equal-and-opposite increment myself, as I'm working through a lesson with Christopher. (I desperately need better notes.)

In any case, this is something I'm going to be looking at as we work through Saxon Math 8/7.

p.s.

Thinking about it, I don't see why an incremental approach can't incorporate quite a lot of meaning-through-difference teaching, as well....

I'm going to mull.

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Jun 2005

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Teach them together, as opposites.

'opposites' in the sense that when you multiply two factors you then have a multiple of those factors ..... the multiple is the 'output'; the 'factor' is the 'input.....

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Jun 2005

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It's interesting how you internally organized your autism theories -- I had a different organization: "Probably BS" and "Not probably BS". Lovaas was NPBS: Greenspan was PBS. SSRIs were NPBS: Secretin was PBS.

I remember being quite concerned about whether developmental stages need to proceed in alphabetical order. They haven't, in Ben, and he's pretty functional anyway, but he's not a typical kid; you can tell he is different.

What do think are the best references on developmental issues? (wink)

Here are some more questions I want to ask you about your reading:

• Do you read books in order from front to back?

(I tend to skim a lot, and jumpp around -- this is fast but may contribute to 'fragmentation')

• Is there something special that you do to ensure your notes are decipherable later?

I don't mean handwriting-wise -- but so often when I take notes I find afterward that they're pretty useless; too cryptic, or maybe I just chose the wrong thing to write down. It sounds like this happens to you too, at times -- from what you said about your notes in the russian math book.

-- CarolynJohnston - 30 Jun 2005

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I want to know how you can buy all those books and what you do with them afterwards. I get most of my books from the library so I can't write in them. In some ways, it is better because if a book isn't any good (BS in Carolyn speak), then I haven't wasted anything but my time. If a book is really good, I can always buy it, but I usually don't.

-- AnneDwyer - 01 Jul 2005

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I've gotten most of the books Catherine recommends from the library, when the library has them. It's often so good that I return the book to the library and order it -- even though the house is already groaning under the weight of all the books we have.

Speaking of words the language doesn't have -- I heard from my husband the other night that German has a word for having a song running through your head. Does anyone know the word for that? Because I need it.

-- CarolynJohnston - 01 Jul 2005

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It's interesting how you internally organized your autism theories -- I had a different organization: "Probably BS" and "Not probably BS". Lovaas was NPBS: Greenspan was PBS. SSRIs were NPBS: Secretin was PBS.

That was my EXACT organizing principal for YEARS.

After a while it's basically worthless.

But I couldn't come up with anything better.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2005

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What do think are the best references on developmental issues?

I'm still looking, believe it or not.

I've NEVER come up with something good, and I've had people who know the field (who work in it) tell me there isn't anything.

I find that incredibly strange.

Back when Jimmy was little, the Gesell 'Your 3-Year Old' & 'Your 4-Year Old' books were the single best thing available--and they were quite good.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're still the best thing around.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2005

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Anne

I've started re-selling my books on Amazon.com.

It's incredibly easy.

Lately I've been buying books I don't intend to sell (math books & history books & some psychology....)

I always try to unload fiction if I can.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2005

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Also, I spend too much on books.

That's my secret.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2005

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Carolyn

It's almost ingrained in me now to think, as I'm writing a note, 'what will I need to see in the margin a year from now for this to make sense?'

I don't make too many mistakes any more.

I just wish I could get as good at filing things on my computer as I am at taking notes in books.

I read pretty much start to finish, A to Z.

I'm fairly obsessive about that.

It's hard for me to break stride even when I know I should.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jul 2005

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I've been reading a couple of books "the Catherine way", these days -- one on GTD and on project management -- and I've been taking notes in the margins, making connections, etc..

But one thing I haven't managed to make myself do is read straight through, front to back. I've been leaping around in both books, reading whatever jumps out at me.

I do think the notes help me soak it all up.

-- CarolynJohnston - 07 Jul 2005