I Read It...But I Don't Get It - Journal Entry #3

Chapter 6 in Tovani’s book taught me a lot about why it is important to make connections to the text we are reading and some strategies on how to teach this to our students. The concept that I really took away from this chapter was the section titled “Personal Knowledge or Personal Experience?” I never heard these two terms before in relation to making text connections. Personal knowledge is information readers have from stories, movies, television, books, anything that helps them acquire information secondhand. Personal experience is information readers gain from direct experience. Tovani said that when students can’t make a connection to something they are reading, even if they find it interesting, they often get bored, the reading loses their attention and they abandon the text. I think that this is something that I can bring with me into my grade 5 classroom because the curriculum will be more content-based and this is one way I can make sure that the students will want to learn about certain subjects.

Tovani listed several ways in which connections may help a reader. They include: 1. Make visuals in your head; 2. Make the text more interesting because you can interact with it; and 3. Bring meaning to the words instead of expecting the meaning to reside in the words.

I would share these three reasons with my students so that they can understand why it is important to be able to make connections with the text.

“The more connections a reader makes to the text, the better her comprehension is.” 

I Read It...But I Don't Get It - Journal Entry #2

Chapter 2 of Tovani’s book also really caught my attention. The title of the chapter was the first thing that got me thinking. “The Realities of Reading” is something that we as teachers think about all the time. As Tovani said in the first paragraph of this chapter, a lot of people (mostly non educators) believe that learning to read is a very simple process and they don’t understand why students in middle and high school are struggling readers. However, as we learned in the article, The DRIVE Model of Reading: Making the Complexity of Reading Accessible (Cartwright and DUke, 2019), the process of reading is not simple and there are a lot specific things happening in our minds when reading. As stated in this article and in Tovani’s book, many of these processes need to be taught.

Tovani discusses two types of struggling readers found in secondary school. They are resistive readers and word callers. Resistive readers are those that can read but choose not to and word callers are those that can decode the words but don’t understand what they read. I don’t have much experience with teaching middle school or high school students as I am a primary/elementary teacher, however I can see how this would be an issue in these grades and how students manage to get away with doing this throughout their secondary school time.

I really connected with the section “Redefining Reading”. Tovani discusses how parents often think that if students are able to decode words then they are good readers. However, reading is more than decoding words. They need to be able to comprehend what they are reading. I had a student in my kindergarten class who was able to read words at a grade 3 level and his parents thought he was an exceptional reader however he could not tell you a thing about the book. Not even the sequence of events that had happened because he was not comprehending what he was reading.

Tovani listed seven strategies that are coined by P. David Pearson and colleagues that were used by successful readers of all ages. The first thing that caught my attention was the use of “successful readers”. I like this term much better than “good readers” that Tovani tends to use throughout her book. I feel that the term good readers implies that someone is a bad reader and that doesn’t go with my idea of teaching children to read. I have more experience of teaching young children to read and my philosophy is that any child that takes an interest in a book, whether they can read it or not, is a good reader. I feel that having enjoyment and purpose of reading is very important at a young age and will later enhance learning the strategies of reading. The other question that I thought about when I read about the seven strategies is “Can we use these strategies to define where a student is in their reading instead of leveled texts that are pushed on children in the school system?” I also have an issue with using leveled texts with young children. I see too many children identify with a letter at the kindergarten and grade one level and get frustrated with having strategies pushed on them instead of having a full comprehension of why they are leaning certain strategies. I wonder if my thinking about leveled texts will change when I teach grade 5 in the upcoming school year?

I Read It...But I Don't Get It - Journal Entry #1

“Authentic reading is pleasurable as well as purposeful.” 

I got interested in this book as soon as I read the first chapter “Fake Reading”. Tovani discusses so many of the same ideas that I had experiences of thinking about at various times before. For example, on page 7, she talks about how many teachers think that students who are not good readers by a certain grade, will never be good readers. I am ashamed to admit, but this was my thinking for so long. Tovani describes her own personal experience of how she taught herself strategies when she became older. It really got me thinking about the topic and I have decided to do further research to help me come to a better conclusion.

I also loved how she defines “strategies”. She defines a strategy as “...an intentional plan that readers use to help themselves make sense of their reading. Strategies are flexible and can be adapted to meet the demands of the reading task. Good readers use lots of strategies to help themselves make sense of text.” All of the years that I have teaching reading and reading strategies to students, I don’t think that I had a proper definition of what strategy actually meant. Tovani gives a very clear and precise definition that I will be able to remember.

I also loved how she discussed how people who love reading have a different view of reading than those who struggle. She says that people who read often take for granted the real-world payoff and struggling readers seldom get to experience how great it feels to finish a book. I am an avid reader. I love to read anything and everything ever since I was a little girl. It is my favourite pastime and I always have a book with me. Therefore, I do not understand how people do not like to read. But as Tovani said, “They don’t know how much fun it can be to escape day-to-day life by jumping into a good book.” It puts into perspective that people who don’t like to read are like that because they struggle and they cannot get the same enjoyment out of it as I do because when they are struggling to decode or comprehend a text “Reading has lost its purpose and pleasure.”

The last thing I want to comment about is the literacy histories activity she talked about at the end of the chapter. She asked each of her students in her class to bring in a book that had an impact on their life. She stressed that it didn’t have to be a favorite one but an important one. She went on to talk about how she told the class about the book she chose and then she told several stories about some of the students who shared. I found this so touching and moving that I literally cried. It was so impactful to hear about it. Maybe because I feel that books are such an important part of my life. It also got me thinking about an important book in my life. Little Women. I just have such a vivid memory of the first time that I bought that book and read it. I was only 10 or 11 and for some reason, that memory still stays with me. I still have that exact copy of the book on my bookshelf today.