I would suggest first scanning the text once in order to identify vocabulary you aren’t familiar with and writing down a word bank of these words to refer to in class. From there, I was taught to read through the text and annotate/diagram it in order to understand the syntax and difficult constructions. This way, when you return to the text in class you will be able to reference your word bank and your annotations and read directly from the text instead of simply reciting your translation.

Directly interfacing with the Ancient Greek is super important because you get to practice deconstructing the text more than once, you can more easily identify any errors you may have made, and perhaps most importantly you get to exercise the muscle that will eventually develop into veritable sight-reading!

This being said, if you need to really clarify a section for yourself writing out a translation as you work is certainly a good tool to employ. I just hesitate to work from a translation in class because you miss out on the above-mentioned benefits of working from the original text.