Text Annotation Using Active Reading Skills

In this assignment, you will annotate a Ted Talk™ transcript by Angela Lee Duckworth titled “Grit: The power
of person and perseverance” using the active reading skills that you learned about in the Active Reading
PowerPoint™ lecture.

Part I: Pre-reading.
Begin by skimming the title, finding out about the author, and looking at any visuals assists with the start of
reading.

TITLE: “Grit: The Power of a Person and Perseverance”

AUTHOR: Angela Lee Duckworth

ABOUT AUTHOR: Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character

Lab™, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help
children thrive.

She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at

the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton
Behavior Change for Good Initiative™, and faculty co-director of Wharton
People Analytics™.

Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology

at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall
Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from
Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science
Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.
https://angeladuckworth.com/about-angela/

OVERVIEW – WHAT IS GRIT? Grit is the combination of passion (a deep, enduring knowledge of what
you want) and perseverance (hard work and resilience). It is about moving in a direction with consistency and
endurance, like having a clear inner compass that guides all your decisions and actions.

https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-grit-the-power-of-passion-and-perseverance/
 1. Predict: Now that you have a general idea of what the Ted Talk™ is about, write in the below space a
topic sentence that indicates what you think the transcript/speech is about.
I think that this transcript/speech is about how grit is something that you can do to achieve the things you
want in life and to reach your goals.
Click or tap here to enter text.

2. Activate Prior Knowledge: Write down three (3) items, topics, past experiences etc. that you knew
about the article’s topic prior to starting this assignment.

Prior Knowledge #1:I know that grit is something that you have to do in order to get something
accomplished. Click or tap here to enter text.

Prior Knowledge #2: Grit is to build up the courage to do something that will help you reach your
goals. Click or tap here to enter text.

Prior Knowledge #3:I know that having grit is having the passion and perseverance to do what you
want and that you have to work hard to reach the goals that were set for yourself. Click or tap here
to enter text.

Part II: During Reading

Use the below active reading strategies to write in the margins of the piece of literature.

 Summarize: Use your own words to summarize important parts of the article. You may also highlight
the important details.
 Make connections: Write the connections that you make to yourself, someone else, another text, or
movie.
 Ask questions: as you read, write questions that come to your mind that you would like answered.
 Check for understanding: After every one or two paragraphs, pause to make sure that you understand
what you just read. As needed, re-read the text, use context, or mark the text to remind you to review it
later.

“Grit: The Power of Passion and

Perseverance” by Angela Lee Duckworth

00:10
When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding
job in management consulting for a job that was
even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach
seventh graders math in the New York City
public schools. And like any teacher, I made
quizzes and tests. I gave out homework
assignments. When the work came back, I
calculated grades. 

00:34
What struck me was that IQ was not the only
 difference between my best and my worst
students. Some of my strongest performers did
not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my
smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got
me thinking. The kinds of things you need to
learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard:
ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But Make a Connection &/or
Summarize these concepts are not impossible, and I was ask questions: I can relate
Paragraph 1 & 2: In to the concepts that the
firmly convinced that every one of my
the first two students were struggling
students could learn the material if they worked on because I had a hard
paragraphs,
Duckworth did a hard and long enough.  time understanding and
job as teaching focusing on those lessons
seventh graders in and how to do them.
math and like any 01:14
teacher she would Click or tap here to enter text.
After several more years of teaching, I came to
hand out
the conclusion that what we need in education is a
homework
assignment and much better understanding of students and
grade them. Some learning from a motivational perspective, from a Pause & Check for
of the students IQ psychological perspective. In education, the one Understanding.
scores varied at thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But Check mark did: yes
different levels and what if doing well in school and in life depends
Duckworth
on much more than your ability to learn quickly
suddenly knew that
some of her and easily? 
students weren't
doing too well in
her class. Some of 01:45
the concepts that Make a Connection &/or
So, I left the classroom, and I went to graduate ask questions: How long
the students needed
school to become a psychologist. I started did it take to really
to work on, weren't
impossible to do studying kids and adults in all kinds of super understand what was
and Duckworth challenging settings, and in every study my going on with the students
just needed to question was, who is successful here and different IQ scores?
convince the why? My research team and I went to West Point Click or tap here to enter text.
students that hard Military Academy. We tried to predict which
and long work will
cadets would stay in military training and which
get them to
understand those would drop out. We went to the National Spelling
different concepts. Bee and tried to predict which children would
advance farthest in competition. We studied
Click or tap here to rookie teachers working in really tough
enter text. neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still
going to be here in teaching by the end of the
school year, and of those, who will be the most
effective at improving learning outcomes for their
students? We partnered with private companies,
asking, which of these salespeople is going to
 keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most
money? In all those very different contexts, one
characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of
success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't
good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It
was grit. 

02:59
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-
term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking
with your future, day in, day out, not just for the
week, not just for the month, but for years, and Make a Connection &/or
working really hard to make that future a ask questions: How come
grit is something that
reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a
takes a long time to build
sprint.  up?
Click or tap here to enter text.

03:25
A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Pause & Check for
Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high Understanding.
Check mark did: yes
school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and
then waited around more than a year to see who
would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were
significantly more likely to graduate, even when I
matched them on every characteristic I could
measure, things like family income, standardized
achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt
when they were at school. So, it's not just at West
Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit
matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at
Summarize risk for dropping out. 
paragraphs 3 & 4:
Duckworth began
to question herself
about the IQ scores 04:06
and what could To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how
possibly be the little we know, how little science knows, about
cause of low scores. building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask
SHe eventually me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to
decided to leave
teaching and go get
teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep
a degree to become them motivated for the long run?" The honest
a psychologist. answer is, I don't know. 
There, she began to
study different
types of research
and identify what 04:28
could be the (Laughter) 
solution.
Click or tap here to
enter text.
04:29
What I do know is that talent doesn't make you
gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are Make a Connection &/or
many talented individuals who simply do not ask questions: How far
can motivation go to get
follow through on their commitments. In fact, in
someone to really achieve
our data, grit is usually unrelated or even what they want?
inversely related to measures of talent.  Click or tap here to enter text.

04:49 Pause & Check for

Understanding.
So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit Check mark did: yes
in kids is something called "growth
mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford
University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief
that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can
change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has
shown that when kids read and learn about the
brain and how it changes and grows in response
to challenge, they're much more likely to
persevere when they fail, because they don't
believe that failure is a permanent condition. 

05:26
So, growth mindset is a great idea for building
grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm
going to end my remarks, because that's where we
are. That's the work that stands before us. We
need to take our best ideas, our strongest
intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to
measure whether we've been successful, and we
have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start
over again with lessons learned. 
Summarize
paragraphs 5, 6 & 7:
Duckworth asked 05:53
some juniors in In other words, we need to be gritty about getting
highschool to take our kids grittier. 
questionnaires and
then see who would
graduate th next
year. She identified 05:59
that the grittier Thank you. 
students were more
06:00
likely to graduate
because they were (Applause) 
dedicated to their
school work. Make a Connection &/or
Click or tap here to ask questions: Grit is
enter text. something can motivate
people to do better at what
they do best.
Click or tap here to enter text.

Pause & Check for

Understanding.
Check mark did: yes
 Summarize
paragraphs 8, 9 &
10: She began to go
into depth about
what grit really is
and to question
how this will
become apart of a
type a motivation
for the students to
take in. She states
that a growth
mindset is a great
way to build up grit
and that they
needed more of
that mindset to get
to that point.
Duckworth
believed that
testing the students
would be a good
way to see if grit
was hidden within
them.

Click or tap here to

enter text.

Part III: Post Reading

Respond to these questions after you read the literature piece.

1. Evaluate New Knowledge: Think about your prior knowledge (PK) and what you just read. I now
understand that grittier people are people who dedicate their time to any goals that they set and
eventually meet their goals after all of the hard work. Click or tap here to enter text.

2. Revisit Predictions: Write two or three items you have learned that strengthens, changes, or adds to
your prior knowledge or the article’s topic. Below indicate the topics that you are now ‘revisiting
prediction.” This step is significant for you as you are developing your thinking on the topic by
integrating what you have just read with your prior knowledge. The strengths that I learned about
having grit were that when you think of courage you may think of physical bravery, but there are
many other forms of courage. The qualities of courageous people include patience, the ability to
believe the unbelievable, and the guts to say “no”. They are not afraid of taking an unpopular
stand, nor of asking for help. They are able to forgive and move on quickly, but also to stay the
course when everyone else has abandoned ship. To persevere means to start and continue
steadfastly on the path towards any goal you set and frequently this factor alone is the difference
between failure and success.
 Click or tap here to enter text.