Tovani makes some awesome points in the first two chapters. I’ll just choose a couple of quotes that really stuck out to me and reflect on them.
(Page 5) “One critical concept embraced by both researchers and literacy specialists is that learning to read doesn’t end in the elementary grades. Reading becomes more complex as students move into middle and high grades, and teachers need to help students understand difficult text.”
It’s so easy to think that since kids were taught the fundamentals of reading in elementary school, they should know how to read by the time they finish fourth grade. After that they just need to learn new vocabulary, right?!? Ugh! It amazes me that I used to think that by the time kids got to high school that as long as they could say the words they would understand what they were reading. It’s so much more complex than that. I should have known from my own experience with trying to read tax documents and car manuals that reading is not always easy…even as an adult. South Carolina has really raised the bar—our kids have to tackle some really tough text to get through our standards. There’s no way that one discipline can possibly teach how to read all the different types of text out there. May I be hokey for a minute?!? (Too bad if you said no!) With apologies to Hilary Clinton…”It takes an entire school to raise a reader.”
(Page 12) “It wasn’t their fault that they were making stupid connections. It was mine, because I hadn’t showed them how a meaningful connection could deepen their understanding of text.”
In response to this one, I’ll have to borrow a quote Allison Norwood, whom many of you know, said a couple of weeks ago: “An activity has no purpose. A strategy has a purpose.” Oftentimes we get caught up in having students do something but don’t stop to think if they’re actually learning from it. I think when Tovani started out with the sticky notes, it was just an activity…it gave the kids something different to do. But when she took it a step further and had them elaborate on it, it became a strategy. The students were then able to deepen their thinking. Maybe we should pause before our next assignment and ask ourselves, “Is this an activity or a strategy?”
(Page 5) “One critical concept embraced by both researchers and literacy specialists is that learning to read doesn’t end in the elementary grades. Reading becomes more complex as students move into middle and high grades, and teachers need to help students understand difficult text.”
It’s so easy to think that since kids were taught the fundamentals of reading in elementary school, they should know how to read by the time they finish fourth grade. After that they just need to learn new vocabulary, right?!? Ugh! It amazes me that I used to think that by the time kids got to high school that as long as they could say the words they would understand what they were reading. It’s so much more complex than that. I should have known from my own experience with trying to read tax documents and car manuals that reading is not always easy…even as an adult. South Carolina has really raised the bar—our kids have to tackle some really tough text to get through our standards. There’s no way that one discipline can possibly teach how to read all the different types of text out there. May I be hokey for a minute?!? (Too bad if you said no!) With apologies to Hilary Clinton…”It takes an entire school to raise a reader.”
(Page 12) “It wasn’t their fault that they were making stupid connections. It was mine, because I hadn’t showed them how a meaningful connection could deepen their understanding of text.”
In response to this one, I’ll have to borrow a quote Allison Norwood, whom many of you know, said a couple of weeks ago: “An activity has no purpose. A strategy has a purpose.” Oftentimes we get caught up in having students do something but don’t stop to think if they’re actually learning from it. I think when Tovani started out with the sticky notes, it was just an activity…it gave the kids something different to do. But when she took it a step further and had them elaborate on it, it became a strategy. The students were then able to deepen their thinking. Maybe we should pause before our next assignment and ask ourselves, “Is this an activity or a strategy?”
6 comments:
I was shocked at how quickly I was able to read the first two chapters; it’ll probably take me longer to respond than it took me to read because I am such a slow typist.
As an English teacher, I felt such validation while reading. In college none of my course work addressed teaching students to read. I, too, assumed the students I would teach would already know how to read. Boy was I wrong!
The following are one-liners I could agree with whole-heartedly.
“A reader with no questions might just as well abandon the text.” (p.3)
“Teaching a few strategies well is a key aspect of my work.” (p.5) It’s better to do a great job with five strategies than a poor job with ten.
“It’s an unusual teacher who comes into secondary education wanting to teach students how to learn.” (p.7) How true! I certainly didn’t. It is also imperative that we teach students how to think.
“Meaning arrives because we are purposefully engaged in thinking while we read.” (p. 9) As I was reading the first chapter, my mind wandered to something that had happened on my way into school Friday morning. I continued reading and realized several paragraphs later that I had read the words, but I had not comprehended what I had read. I realized that this is something that happens to my students frequently when they read. I shared my experience with them after our independent reading time so they would know they aren’t the only ones whose minds wander when they read. I wonder if the reason why some of my students (especially males) don’t enjoy independent reading is because there’s less purpose than in reading when there is a specific assignment to go along with the reading. If you want kids to be reading for pleasure, does pleasure count as enough of a purpose for all students? Thoughts?
There’s only one quote from the second chapter (or y’all will think that I have a sad life if I have enough time to write more).
“My job is about teaching kids how to read and think about text in meaningful ways that help them better understand the people around them.” (p.16) Amen, sister! In order to do that, I have to teach my students to make connections that go deeper than surface level. That’s part of that teaching them how to think. Sometimes they are too lazy to take their thinking to a higher level; other times it’s that they just don’t know how. That type of thinking has to be modeled for them. I need to incorporate more modeling into my teaching.
Too tired to proofread this carefully. Forgive any errors!
I skipped to the back of the book. He has blackline masters for us teacher to look at the way we teach....what a concept?
I think Monica brings up a great point: "there is some sort of stigma about kids admitting that they don’t understand what they have read." Students (especially the poor readers) think there is something wrong with them if they have questions after reading...it's like they think they're stupid if they don't understand every part of what they've read. But the thing is good readers do ask questions...that's part of what makes them good readers. We just have to get that message across to all our students. That way when they ask questions, they're seen as being good readers instead of poor ones.
I have enjoyed reading all of the comments posted so far. It was especially good to hear from Monica and find out how frustrated some of our kids are with content reading. This semester she has two of my Academic Support students that I know are very low in reading. I will have to ask them about the reading they are doing in their computer class.
I really like the list of Fix-Up Strategies that are listed on page 6. I think modeling these with a piece of reading that is difficult for me would let the students see how a good and avid reader can struggle. I have very little aptitude for science, so I know that if presented with a page from the Applied Biology book I would have problems unless I utilized some of these strategies. I am sure that we have many students, even those in honors or AP, who feel lost when reading from most of their textbooks.
In light of the fact that we are all starting to feel some stress about HSAP, I love the quote on page 16. "My job isn't about raising state test reading scores or getting kids to the advanced reading level on someone else's scale. My job is about teaching kids how to read and think about text in meaningful ways that help them better understand the people around them." I know the tests are important, but so is authentic reading and understanding for that big test of life in the real world.
Even in my short time as a teacher I have noticed that many of my students don't read for the pleasure of reading or even for the knowledge they gain by reading. They are simply doing it because they have to and if they comprehend it than it's an added bonus.
The reason this may be was discussed by Trovani, maybe it's because it is too difficult and they don't know how to break it down so they can truly understand it. I taught my students a strategy that I learned from another professional book. It consisted of a few different things.
The first part was identifying the meaning of a nonsense word using the context of the sentence it was in. "He put his blorf on his head because it was cold outside." Without ever seeing the word "blorf" before we can gather that it probably means hat. I had my students make up their own sentences and as a class we tried to determine the definition.
For the second part I gave my students a list of four unknown words. (real words - just unknown to my students) They had to guess what the definition was of each word. I then gave them sentences that contained the words. Using the context within the sentences they had to revise their guess of the definition. Most students had a much closer guess after using the context.
Along with these assignments we discussed the importance of not skipping over unknown words but rather using what is given to try to determine the definition. We also talked about where they will come across unknown words (job/college applications, employee handbooks, etc.). This strategy can be used in any classroom to help students learn how to use context to help them better comprehend what they are reading. As follow-up I had my students find words they did not know in the newspaper. They had to guess what the word meant by using the context of the sentence it was in.
On page 19 Torvani says “The information that I remember and use came from constructing meaning while learning about something new”. I think that using the strategy I described can help students to do that. In order for the students to learn something new, they must be able to understand and construct meaning from it.
After reading the first two chapters of Tovani's book I found myself guilty of typing the highlights and main points I want my students to learn in a note format rather than expecting them to do the work of reading for themselves and requiring students to actually formulate their own questions as Trish pointed out. I also agree with Monica that the students don't want to be singled out as being a less able reader, but as Tovani added (p.9) "Meaning arrives because we are purposefully engaged in thinking WHILE we read."
Another comment that Tovani made to one of her students(p.16) is something that I have found useful in my classes, "You not only made a connection to your personal life to help you understand the text, but you also went back to the text for evidence to support your thinking." I think if we select reading materials that perk up the interest paid to our content it definitely contributes to the student connecting it to their personal lives and for those who completed National Board Certification the entire portfolio was to be based on the concept of how our strategies directly contributed to our students' learning; one sure way is to have the students make a personal connection to what they are reading or a concept being learned.
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