Doc Meek

A Mom asked me, “How do you make reading comprehension go up?”

A teacher asked, “What steps can I take to help the students improve their memories of what they have read?”

The Triple M is the short answer:

“Make Mental Movies.”

Here is an excerpt of what I wrote to the teacher (which I also shared with the Mom):

Slow reading is symptomatic of inadequate comprehension in the reading process. When you slow down and read even slower (at first) and take the time to learn how to make pictures (still photos, and especially movies) in your mind’s eye as you slowly read forward now, you will find two astounding things happening:

(1) The brain quickly learns to make movies faster and faster as you persist in this initially slow process.

(2) Even when the initial reading is not fast, the movies dramatically increase comprehension and memory, so the brain quickly figures out, hey, I can go faster now. As the speed of reading and making movies simultaneously goes up, astoundingly and paradoxically, the comprehension and memory zoom up also.

Hey, try it with some simple “Dick and Jane” stuff initially and don’t even read a full sentence at first. Example:

“The black dog chased the red ball down the street,” is not read altogether to completion at first.

First you read only “The black dog…” and make a picture in your head of a black dog.

Then you read only “chased the red ball” and make a movie in your head of the black dog chasing the red ball.
Then you read “down the street” and make a movie with background now, if you haven’t already done that background part, and see the action!

Then, rewind the movie by twirling your hand around in the air in a tight circle, as if you were rewinding a video “manually.”
Smile and laugh, eh?

Then, as I say to my proteges that I am mentoring:

“Now remember, don’t remember everything;
just watch the movie and see what happens.” 😮

After they watch the movie, I ask them questions to see what their comprehension and memory is. I ask “sneak questions” like, “What is the dog running on?” Or, “What is in the background?” Or “What is in the sky above?” Or “What is in front of the dog?” Or “What is the dog running on?” Or
“Does the dog have a short tail or a long one?”

The beauty of this protocol and the questions is that everybody has different answers to the same “content” question, proving that individuality and vastly improved memory and comprehension go hand in hand.

Beautiful, eh?

Here’s the “goofy mantra”:

Go… slowly… even more slowly… at first.
Then as you patiently plod along… smile… at first… laugh… the pace picks up automatically…
slowly over time… and soon…

You are going a hundred miles an hour and memory and comprehension are beautiful, not to mention your movies.

Start slowly… very slowly… lots of time to learn to go fast!!! 😮

Love your initial lack of speed now . . . smile . . . laugh . . .

Have fun being a slow really fast learner. 😮

Doc Meek, Active Learning Specialist

Sherwood Park, Alberta, CANADA; South Jordan, Utah, USA

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