I have read that one way of learning web development is to recreate existing templates. If you have done it before, I want to ask what methods and techniques you used to make it an effective learning technique for youself. Thanks 
Templates for what? I have some brief experience with WordPress templates. They are easy to edit.
If you want to do this I would save the template locally and try changing options to see how it looks but you can do some of this with browser inspection tools these days.
Any website templates, like landing pages and portfolio. I downloaded one and it provided all the files(html, stylesheet, images, and js).
I just watched a video from codeEverything that talked about doing this. His reasoning was being able to work through very clean code, aiding in overall understanding of the code. Also, taking unknown pieces for later research aids in learning new things. Overall, I agree with the his methodology. I may do this in the future, but it’s low on my list right now.
Since it’s low on your list right now, mind sharing what’s your top priorities on learning
It is a good idea. One part of a developers job is to recreate websites from psd’s, so why not practice and remake templates!
One particular place I have found useful is onepagelove.com. There are thousands of awesome websites that you can recreate and learn from.
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My largest goal right now is improving my analytical thinking through doing a lot of algorithms. Doing them has taught me the proper mindset for problem-solving, as well as quickly identifying gaps in my fundamental knowledge of Javascript. My second goal is to continue making small projects that allows me to do DOM manipulation. Third is to fit in some CSS tutorials/ projects that might make my pages look less amateur. CSS is more complex than people give it credit for, so I have to practice it. Fourth on the list is to do some re-creation of existing sites, using them how we are discussing in this thread; I do see a large benefit in doing that.
I’m trying to do all of this while working 45hrs a week, doing full-time college, and attending a trade school 2 nights a week. On weekdays I average 2-4hrs a day coding, and weekends have been 8-10hrs (sometimes more). It’s a crazy workload, but at least college will be done in August.