About Isakson Literacy

History:

We are a husband/wife team who started Isakson Literary after 39 years working in public schools in three states and universities in two states.  We retired from daily teaching and counseling, but realized we still want to share what we have learned about improving academic reading.

Our Philosophy about Academic Reading:

The essential tools of academic learning are reading, writing, viewing, listening, speaking, and thinking. When students have trouble learning with these processes, we believe they can acquire, and fairly quickly too, important strategies to learn in effective, academic ways. Virtually anyone can improve their learning from texts and can do so with engagement, deep learning, and retention.  With determination and armed with know-how, anyone can become an effective and efficient learner who controls and enjoys their learning, even at high levels of difficulty.

Students learn reading strategies best in authentic, relevant settings, so for our Advanced Reading Strategies for College Success course, we have you read about the strategy before class, see a demonstration of it, and actually practice it on the very texts you need to read for their other classes. You use a ThinkSheet to guide you through the process step by step at first, but you stop using it asap so you can adapt the strategy to unique reading situations. Class time is used  (1) addressing questions, (2) pulling together what you and classmates have learned, (3) trouble-shooting challenges in applying the target strategy to particular text situations, (4) practicing again on your own texts with the instructor roving and coaching you with probing questions to assure metacognitive thinking, and (5) sharing and debriefing the practice experience. For our Surviving College Reading course, we use the same philosophy but provide more support, expecting less pre-class preparation, and more demonstration, shared practice, and coaching in class, giving you double the time to learn each essential strategy well but teaching you about half the strategies as in the advanced course.

We are impressed with many of the college reading texts we have seen, but would not use them because we believe you need to get right in and try the essential strategies on your own texts with coaching – instead of doing lots of reading about reading and doing drills on texts irrelevant to your immediate reading and study needs.

We believe you LEARN best BY DOING with just enough support to experience the strategies on your own academic texts–those you care about and need to know well.

Our Mission Statement:

To help college students, graduate students, college-bound high school students, and in-career professionals become strategic, engaged readers of academic texts with basic understanding, deep learning through critical and creative thinking, flexible reading rate, productive attitudes toward academic reading, and metacognitive awareness.  We want you to be prepared readers, demanding readers, and ultimately transformed learners.

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