DIRECTIONS: Read it once and guess in the first box. Read it again and guess in the second. Then put this page face down.
The Ship That Sank in Sight of Land
On 10 August 1628 the warship Vasa left Stockholm harbor on her first voyage. She carried
sixty-four bronze cannons on two gun decks, more than any ship then sailing in the Baltic. A light wind
came off the shore. Vasa leaned, water poured in through her open gun ports, and she sank after
sailing about 1,300 meters. Around thirty people drowned.
An inquiry was held within weeks and nobody was punished: the ship had been built to a design the
king had altered himself, and the shipwright who began her had died before she was finished. The wreck
lay in cold water too low in salt for shipworms to live in, which is why the timber did not rot. She was
raised in 1961, after 333 years on the bottom, and is now the most complete seventeenth-century ship in
the world.
Before you turn over
Ten questions on the back. After reading it once, how
many will you get right?
Now read it again. After reading it twice, how many will
you get right?
In pen. No changing it.
Rereading Feels Like Learning — the test
How learning works · Page 2 of 3
DIRECTIONS: Page 1 stays face down. Cannot remember one? Leave it blank.
In what year did the Vasa sink?
How many bronze cannons did she carry?
How many gun decks were the cannons on?
About how far did she sail before she sank?
About how many people drowned?
Water got into the ship through what?
Who had altered the design she was built to?
What had happened to the shipwright who began her?
Why did the timber not rot in three hundred years?
How many years was she on the bottom?
Rereading Feels Like Learning — the gap
How learning works · Page 3 of 3
DIRECTIONS: Mark page 2 out of ten.
Your three numbers
Number
What I predicted after reading it once
What I predicted after reading it twice
What I actually got
The gap — second prediction minus score
Reading it the second time felt like learning. Answering question 6 felt like failing. You have three numbers in a column now — write down which of those two feelings was telling you the truth.
The second read added something. Say what, exactly — and whether it was to the score or to the confidence.
Suppose you had spent the second read covering the passage and saying it back to yourself instead. Which of the ten questions do you think would have gone differently, and why that one?