"Why Am I Reading This?"

This next chapter’s title is “Why Am I Reading This?” which basically is a question that students usually ask themselves and teachers when it comes to their reading assignments. The chapter focuses in the importance of us as teachers looking for the best methods for teaching of our certain content areas, having a good communication with our students regarding the purpose of the reading, and providing them with useful information that will allow them to comprehend and retain important information.

Tovani recommends teachers to “be selective about what kids read. If everything in the text isn’t important or well written, don’t assign it all…” (65), meaning that we need to be aware that sometimes children are required to do reading that more than likely won’t serve any purpose for the assignment they have to complete once they finish the reading. For this it is also very important to inform our students what they should read for (the purpose of their reading) so that they may have a better focus for their reading. This partially answers the chapters opening title/question. It is a motivation mechanism that tends to work for any type of reading. This way, students feel that they aren’t simply handed something to read just because, or that they need to memorize every single detail they read. “Clear instructional purposes often give guidance for how the reader might hold her [/his] thinking… [it] can greatly improve a reader’s comprehension, because the reader has an indication of what to read for” (59), and for this to occur, teachers need to have a well planned lesson for each reading assignment. As teachers we need to know what it is that we want our students to know, therefore we must let them know what is expected of them to understand from their readings. Once students know the purpose for their reading, they can be advised to take notes, write down questions and seek the answers within the reading, and if the answers can’t be found they can certainly bring them into discussion with the rest of the class.  

For the benefit of teachers and therefore their students, Tovani suggests what she calls “instructional focus sheets” (55), which are just a form of helping teachers focus in what it is that they seek to accomplish in any given lesson and assignments. Even for teachers, it can be hard to stay on track, there can be moments of concern that they aren’t either quite sure of the purpose of their lessons, and Tovani demonstrates that it is ok to have these moments, but it is of great need to have the ability to sit down and put ourselves right on track. This is the purpose of those sheet; they consist of the questions:

1)      “What is essential for students to know?”

2)      “What two places may cause students difficulty?”

3)      “What will you model that will help students negotiate the difficult parts?”

4)      “What do they need to do with the information they are reading?”

5)      “How will they hold their thinking while they read?” (55)

"Real Rigor"

One of the reasons I really like Tovani’s book is because she is concise and gets right to the point she wants to talk about in each chapter. For this chapter titled “Real Rigor”, she emphasizes that every student in our class will have different reading abilities. Even though we must provide them a textbook that they will all read, we can ease the anxiety some of them will have and find other methods for them to understand the material we are studying and not fall behind.

I know all of us have been in a situation where the information we are reading, just doesn’t stick, but that doesn’t mean we will never understand it. To this Tovani suggests to “provide a choice of reading materials. Don’t limit students’ ability to think about your content because the textbook is too hard. Collect accessible text related to your field” (pg: 49). Sometimes all we need to do is find the right material that will teach our students in a way they comprehend. I know the textbook will be their primary resource for any given topic that will be dealt with in the class, but we shouldn’t limit them to only go by the book, this is the beauty about reading.

Tovani has explained that her methods haven’t always been seen as correct by teachers she has gone to help “…Some teachers might be confusing rigor with unrealistic expectations. Is it rigor to assign a tough textbook chapter when no one in the class can understand it?” (pg: 40). The author also states that there is a chance teachers can find “alternative texts” for cases where the comprehension of an assigned reading isn’t working for a student. Alternative texts serve the purpose of addressing very similar readings that the teacher can substitute for students that are struggling with a required text. An example presented in book was that of the case of a student that was struggling with Huckleberry Finn, Tovani suggested to the teacher to allow the student to read Finn, which she does confess that it “…doesn’t have the same literary genius as Mark Twain’s … but it does give students something that’s a bit easier to read, as well as a way to explore similar themes” (pg: 43).  Obviously, in order to give the correct alternative text, teachers must do some research to identify books like this that will serve the same purpose, which is not an all that easy task, but it surely can be worth it.

Giving them other resources, which she calls “accessible text” will deepen their comprehension, and often causes them to have more curiosity. Accessible text is simply a tool that we can use in any given situation, but its main purpose is that of helping students understand something that isn’t making a connection to them after reading it off the textbook or an assigned reading. Tovani states that “when I use text that is interesting, well written, and appropriately matched to the level of my students, my life as a teacher gets easier” (pg: 39), because of course the main purpose is to teach our students and teach them right, but having a class of 25 or more students will be difficult to make sure that we teach every student right. Why not look for an easier way to make it happen? Why not help them help us make it happen?  

Modeling reading

Chapter 3 in this book is titled "Parallel Experiences"; to me this title simply defines one of the key actions which Tovani continually states that would help us as teachers understand what it is to not understand a difficult text that we read, just like our students. Difficult readings for students often involve unknown vocabulary, boredom, and  their level of reading comprehension. As discussed in my previous blog, a good form of helping students understand certain terms within a reading is by prompting them to look up their definitions and related them to something they are already familiar with.
Addressing the issue regarding difficult contents of reading, Tovani advises teachers to exercise their abilities to comprehend difficult texts "...to see how I as a good reader would negotiate the difficulty" (pg: 29), as a way to put ourselves in the place of our students, and try to "...identify what they are struggling with" (pg: 29). This will create a deeper connection between student and teacher if we, as teachers, are capable of having empathy for the student in regards to their reading skills. Speaking of which, the level of reading of each student is different, and it is another important aspect that teachers should study in their selecting of text books. An example that Tovani gives was about one of the times she went to an English tenth-grade classroom to help them read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which she took up and read for herself before her lesson. This helped her see what certain problems her students could encounter and how she would go by to address them.
After having had the chance to read the book, Tovani was honest and said that the book was boring until she got to the "exciting" portion of it. This to her seemed very important as a goal to keep her students engaged in a difficult reading; she knew the book would be a tedious read for most of the students and that more than likely they would stop reading it after a few pages because of this. So in order to help find some sort of interest in the book, she decided to present them the pages where "...gory parts, as well as the evil monster's deed" (pg: 32) began to appear. She began her lesson by reading out loud and formulating questions that the students could relate to based on the reading, as a way to "model [her] thinking". Now from my perspective, this was a good step Tovani took to engage the students in their required reading, but what happened next proved to be, from my perspective, more of an important point for the students' reading comprehension skills.
After modeling her thinking strategy for a bit, she decided to pass on the reading to the students and asking them to continue with their own questions about the reading and write them down on a piece of paper. This allowed her to identify students that were struggling with the reading, as they weren't capable of computing any questions to ask. So then, Tovani advices teachers to be "...the best reader of the content they are teaching" (pg: 35).

"The "So What" of Reading Comprehension" Chapter

After reading this chapter, I feel that I it has made me realize that I do process information that I read the way Tovani explains that is a useful method in helping students actually understand the material they are reading, even though, due to the fact that it has become a gained skill, I often don't notice this process anymore. I basically have acquired it well, that I no longer need to take the step by step process consciously, I just proceed through it subconsciously, like many of us do.
The "thinking strategy" steps that Tovani utilizes in her teaching of reading, start with the reading of the text and at the same time creating "connections" with it, proceeded by the establishment of questions, "a conclusion", and other thinking mechanisms. This was followed by the great "So What?" question, where the student steps out of the text and asks, well, what about this? What is the purpose of me reading this? "How does this thinking help you better understand the text?" (pg:17) Then the final step is returning the thinking back to the reading; be it finding evidence to what a conclusion or another end thought after the thinking process.
Tovani was inspired to create this "So What?" thinking strategy after her experience with a student that utilized this question as a way of "shutting down other people's thinking" (pg: 11) , but then Tovani realized that she could use this question within her method for the benefit of her students, and as a way to turn her students sarcasm and smarty pants behavior around.
In the creation of this strategy, Tovani established "four principals [as a] guide [for] most of [her] instruction]", which are basically the working of the previously mentioned strategies: "assess the text", "modeling", "define a purpose", and "teach students how to hold their thinking and give them opportunities to use the information they've held" (pg: 17-18).  I think for this last step mentioned previously, the application of group assignments is very useful, especially for students that are being introduced to a new subject, which could be used in my case within my Theatre and Spanish classes; most students aren't exposed to either until they reach their high school education.

Comprehension of terms

For my first post about my reading, I choose to talk about the importance of us as teachers understanding that we have the power to help our students’ gain good reading and comprehension skills. Within this understanding, we must begin by assisting our students in the comprehension of words and helping them obtain good thinking skills that are required during their reading.

For the subject I will be teaching, which is Theatre and Spanish, I do believe that all of which Tovani speaks of in the first chapter of his textbook does apply to it. Theatre and Spanish both deal with a lot of literature. I want my students to be able to understand what they read, especially since they will be interpreting in occasions what they read, be it for a play, a monologue and what not. For the second subject I’ll be teaching, I can also apply all of this, which reminds me about the Primary and Secondary Discourses spoken about in James Gee’s article. The better we teach our students how to learn, “…teach kids how to be strategic readers is to help them become more thoughtful about their reading”, and better progress they will have during their whole education.

 I have, like everyone else during our grade school years, struggled with the understanding of certain readings I was required to do (especially since I spent some five years out of the country); nonetheless I was given great teachers during my high school education, that helped me get back right on track. To add to this, Tovani accentuates in her writing that one of the main tasks that students need to do during their reading is to identify “terms” that they aren’t familiar with to see what they mean. “This activity help[s] students learn to slow down and look for definitions of unfamiliar terms, a useful strategy for reading any textbook” (pg: 7), which was a strategy that two of her colleagues, Amy and Ann utilized to help their students in biology and English. I think that this strategy reflects an answer to “What is the difference between learning to read and reading to learn?” 

First Blog :)

Hello LLSS 438 classmates! this is the very first time I write a blog, and I know it might be the same for some of you. The closest I've been to writing a blog I suppose would be on my Facebook page, within the "Notes" section; the type of blog I considered that was probably a journal. I think I wrote it in a sort of poetic manner. I have selected Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? by Cris Tovani, mainly because it was one of the two only books that I could get that addresses the grades that I will be teaching in the future, and out of the two the one that caught my attention the most. I'm one of those readers that likes to actually skim through the first pages of a book to see if I can really engage into the reading and understand the content, and this book has so far been a good read. 
Unfortunately, I have never been attracted to create a blog, maybe because I simply didn't know what they were actually about. But anyway, I'm very excited to see how this turns out. Hopefully it will be fun and useful for all of us. I usually have a good time writing, even though sometimes I do run into a writer's block moment and I have to take a breath, maybe a drink of water, and a good old stretch to be able to set me thoughts straight again.
I can't lie, I'm nervous about this, but hey, what can come out of this? The importance of this is to grow, to expand and gain more confidence in our reading, writing, and teaching. 
Before this class I have actually experienced with a bit of blogging as I became a member of the Education department at UNM. In my Educational Technology class I was introduced to a very helpful blogging site called Edutopia. This a blog that I have read recently because it related to our class; it tells the story of a teacher seeking to find a way to motivate her students into reading. 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/infographics-students-reading-history-sarah-gross