Do I Really Have to Teaching Reading: Part 3

In chapters 6 and 7, Tovani explores the ideas of retention and group work.  She begins by discussing how challenging it is for teachers to know whether or not kids are thinking while reading since we can’t see it. We can’t see what their brains are doing.  She suggests an idea that echoes her previous book- marking the text.  Students can start by watching their teacher model good thinking while reading through annotations.  Some beginning suggestions to get your students started:

1. Mark one quote in the text and have a conversation about the quote
2. Write a question that doesn’t have a simple answer
3. Ask your partner’s opinion about your ideas
4. Are you copying information from the text or sharing your thinking? Share your thinking.
5. Make a statement or recommendation based on what you’ve read. Don’t be wishy-washy.

She also gives suggestions to her students on what to do when marking text:

• Write the thinking next to words on the page that cause you to have the thought.
• If there isn’t room on the text to write, draw a line showing the teacher where the thinking is written
• Don’t copy the text; respond to it
• Merely underlining text is not enough. Thinking about the text must accompany underlining.
• There is no one way to respond to text: ask a question, make a connection to something familiar, given an opinion, draw a conclusion, make a statement

“ Because it is new to students, we have to spend a lot of time and energy on a small amount of text. Yet it is worth the time and effort. Thinking held on paper not only informs our instruction and can be sued as an alternative assessment tool for a more accurate picture of student learning, but also helps students rehearse their thinking before they begin a writing assignment.”

Tovani explains the importance of modeling thinking and marking text over and over as well as using student models as examples for others to follow. This is such a powerful practice because not only does it give another visual to support the kids of work you want kids to emulate, it also gives a positive affirmation to the reader who’s work was selected that he can do they work. Additionally, it shows the other students in class, “Hey, I want to have my work showcased by the teacher.” What a powerful motivator!

Tovani gives tips to kids who get stuck while reading:

1. Trust the author. Don’t panic at first if the text doesn’t make sense. The author will slowly reveal clues.
2. Ask questions. Quite likely someone else may have the same question. Someone else may be able to clear up the confusion.
3. Slow down. Give yourself time to read, reread, and paraphrase what you’ve read.
4. It’s ok to go back. Sometimes readers go back and reread confusing parts of texts.

Tovani then goes into detail about a few strategies she uses to mark the text in order to hold her thinking or her student’s thinking: (She often has everyone in class at the beginning of the school year bring in highlighters and sticky notes to share)

Sticky notes:

• flag a page
• mark a line
• find a part quickly
• make a confusing part to get clarification
• hold thinking to share later

Highlighters:

• give students a yellow highlighter to mark confusing places
• give students a pink highlighter to mark places they understand well enough to explain to someone else
• use a highlighter to emphasize the reader’s purpose
• a line that causes the reader to ask a question
• a line the reader can relate to
• a line that strikes the reader
• a word or term that is unknown
• a section that is well written

Additionally, Tovani create Comprehension Constructors which help her struggling readers through tough passages and enable them to still be successful by getting their thinking and confusion down on paper.  The constructors differ each time she creates one but they always focus on one or two different reading strategies. Sometimes she wants them to focus on background knowledge, other times, connections and patterns, or even sometimes on just the sensory images the author is trying to create in the reader’s head.

Tovani is also quick to point out that it isn’t just questions teachers are after but also after answers to those questions as well.  She comments, “ asking questions is a signal that you are constructing meaning. Readers who don’t ask questions are often disengaged and unable to remember what they’ve read. We pointed out that we also want them to find answers to their questions.”  

Tovani closes the chapter relaying the importance of kids working together to create meaning. She quotes from a classroom poster, “Individually we are smart. Collectively, we are brilliant.”  This is a great transition into the next chapter in the book stressing how integral it is for students to share what they are reading, what they are thinking about their reading (patterns, connections, etc...), and what questions they are creating as a result of their reading.

Tovani like small groups for discussion as do I in my classroom. She points out that small group discussion:

• stimulates higher levels of thinking
• develops social skills
• develops listening skills
• encourages articulation of thinking
• honors all learners
• holds kids accountable
• helps students remember
• allows students to make connections
• allows others to see different perspectives
• promotes deeper understanding

Tovani begins group work by creating a few norms groups must follow. These aren’t teacher generated norms, but norms built as a class: teachers and students together. The students give their suggestions about what makes good groups and good group work time.

Group members:

• Student Action: If I am in a group that doesn’t work for me, I will tough it out and request a different group next time.
• Teacher Action: I agree to honor group requests as best I can. However, as the person responsible for classroom instruction, I get the final say about group composition.

Work Completion:

• Student Action: I recognize that I can’t force anyone but myself to do something and I agree to do my part.
• Teacher Action: I won’t expect students to police each other’s behavior. I won’t give group grades. Instead I will notice who is contributing and who isn’t and respond accordingly.

Help in groups:

• Student Action: I will help members of my group if I can. If I am the one who is stu8ck, I will ask my group members to help me first. If that doesn’t work, I will seek help elsewhere- through the teacher, another group or a text resource.
• Teacher Action: I will model how the group is supposed to do something. I will also observe groups and share what is going well and what isn’t working in order to help groups run smoothly. I will be available whenever possible to answer questions

Tovani also discusses what interferes with group work:

• Someone hasn’t read the material or completed the task.
• Suggestion: this person goes to a designated quiet spot to finish the reading and writing before he or she joins the group. If the whole class hasn’t read the assignment, maybe the text is too hard, or maybe class time needs to be used for silent reading before discussion groups can meet.
• Someone talks all the time
• Suggestion: give this person a job. Have the student record thoughts on a chart of in a group double entry diary. Provide some waords that other group members could use to politely remind the culprit that he or she is monopolizing the conversation.
• Someone doesn’t talk
• Suggestion: I think it okay to honor someone’s decision to listen. It is important thought that this person have a chance to be heard. Sometimes people don’t talk because they don’t want to break in and seem rude.

Tovani suggests the value of providing feedback throughout all processes especially in group discussions. Letting kids know what they have done well, what can be improved upon and where they can go to take the discussion further, are all valuable to the students individually and to the class as a whole. She says, “over time I notice that students not only have their reading material, but are citing textual evidence. After a few weeks, I notice that they are listening more closely to their group members as well as acknowledging their thinking by asking a question or sharing additional thoughts. They seem to raise the standard of their talk because they want to be quoted in my notes and during debriefing sessions. Students feel comfortable with pauses and return in their notes to continue the discussion. I can’t expect students to get better at discussion if I don’t give them specific and immediate feedback.”

She closes giving some suggestions for guiding students in group discussions:

Reading:

• give an overview of what’s been read so far
• share something interesting from the book
• a character action
• an opinion about something that has happened
• a question
• a provocative part
• a confusing part

Writing:

• share your thinking about a quote
• consider questions that don’t have simple answers
• ask your group members their opinion
• ask yourself, “Am I just retelling or sharing my thinking?”
• make a statement or recommendation, and use textual evidence to support what you are saying.

Do I Really Have to Teaching Reading: Part 2

Tovani discusses the growing concern all teachers face:”too much content and not enough accessible text.” How do teachers deal with all this content? They end up lecturing in order to cover the content.  The concern with lecturing is students don’t take ownership over their learning thus they are not able to connect with what they are  learning.  As a result, “students aren’t getting an opportunity to construct meaning.”  Tovani quotes from Janet Allen what a devastating effect this has had on our current history curriculum, “ I think this is one of the things that has left most of us with such sketchy understandings of historical events: someone tried to cover all the events rather than help us understand the social and political concepts several events might have shared.” We should be focusing all along on helping our students discover the patterns and connections throughout history rather than covering every detail.

Tovani uses accessible texts with her students. She says, “ a lot of my accessible text comes from newspapers and magazines. It is timely, well written, and short. Often it can be read in one sitting or in a class period. Accessible text helps students make a connection between school subjects and the real world because it helps them experience reading that is done in the real world.”  I can see this connection being especially pertinent with reading texts that students would have difficulty understanding such as Shakespeare. For example, I am thinking about teaching Othello next year. This is a challenging text for most students to read, yet the thematic topics of racism, prejudice, betrayal, war, anger, are all topics still very relevant and apparent in our society today. Perhaps I can match up what we are reading in Othello with current war situations in Syria, Afghanistan, etc... Tovani quotes, “ My intention is to give students something to read that is worthy of their time, something that they actually have the potential to understand- and maybe even finding a piece of text that will turn kids on to the content.”

I think Tovani unearths a problem I know many teachers face: putting relevant and thoughtful texts in front of our students that give them something that is challenging and captivating to read.  Tovani includes how to get around the textbook problem many teachers face:

1. Create multiple sources of texts at various reading levels, without abandoning textbooks completely.

2.Provide managed choice: select from a range of options based upon interest and background knowledge.

3. Individualize instruction- tailor instruction to student needs, with more small-group work and less whole-class lecture.

reading this section in Tovani’s book reminds me of a question someone used to ask me, “ What do you teach?” I would always respond with,  “I teach Language Arts. “ and he would always correct me, “No, you teach students.”  This is applicable to what Tovani is asserting. Don’t we need to consider if we keep plugging information into our students, we will find we aren’t teaching kids anymore but just teaching facsimiles of kids?  We are losing the interaction between teacher and student by trying to cram them so full of information.  Tovani brings up the ability for teachers to create “text sets.”  Text sets:

• contain a wide variety of written texts
• contain materials that vary in length, difficulty and text structure
• contains examples of text that are relevant, interesting, and accessible to most students
• gives students several options for obtaining information
• provide opportunities for students to practice reading strategies and learn content information

I can see this being a great addition to my all boys’ class especially for my struggling readers who need visuals or additional shorter pieces to read in order to increase their learning and understanding. As Tovani concludes this chapter she states, “I think that as kids move on to middle and high school, the material they’re asked to read is too hard. If kids are always reading textbooks that are too hard for them, their reading is never going to improve. If we want to ensure that our students’ reading ability grows, we have to give them text that they can practice with, at a level of difficulty that is appropriate.”

Chapter 5 discusses the importance of setting purpose with our students before they read. Too often students assume that the faster they read, they better reader they are. Tovani comments on this misconception, “the purpose readers set for themselves as they read affects comprehension in several ways. First it determines the speed of reading....Purpose also determines what the reader remembers. When readers have a purpose, they tend to remember more of the text.  Recognizing that purpose often determines what is important and what a reader remembers has major implications for content instruction.” THis made me think that if I assign 20-30 pages a night, and one of my kids blazes through the reading to just get the pages done, I have really lost multiple days of learning. Why? Because the student won’t have connected to the text since there is no purpose set, also, he will either have to reread and fake his way through reading the rest of the novel in order to keep up.  

Tovani makes a contemplative argument that really hit me as a teacher, “many of us become experts on our content. We become familiar with our textbooks and  novels and often forget what it was like to be a beginning student of our disciplines. Inadvertently, we water down our content because we try to cover too much content.” She further explains that often we expect our students to be masters of the content the first time they have read a text. However, we weren’t experts the first time we taught the text but rather had to learn and learn year after year what is important.  In order to help our students and ourselves, we must cut down the content.  We must establish our own instructional purpose for what we are teaching:

1. Decide what students should know after reading the piece. Focus on essential information only.
2. Anticipate what might cause students difficulty.
1. Are students lacking background knowledge?
2. Will difficult vocabulary interfere with meaning?
3. Will difficult concepts need to be explained further?
4. Is the text about challenging subject matter?
5. Is the text organized in a confusing manner?
3. Model how you would negotiate difficulty. Try thinking out loud at one of the places where you anticipate students will experience difficulty. Give them a tip on how to negotiate the next part
4. What do you want them to be able to do with the information once they have finished reading? How will they hold their thinking so they can return to it later to use in a discussion, a paper or a project?
5. Model how they should hold their thinking and provide tools. Should they mark text, use sticky notes, complete a double entry diary?

Tovani really stresses the importance of giving kids a clear purpose before reading even so much as for our students to understand specifically what will be asked of them upon completion of their reading at the end of the novel.  Helping students to connect the piece to their own lives also creates an additional motivation and understanding as they read.  Sometimes purpose isn’t given before reading is assigned. Tovani also addresses this with her students so they know what to do:

1. Look for interesting details that could have multiple meanings. Ask yourself, why did the author or cartoonist add that detail?
2. Ask questions about the title and subtitle. Try to figure out how the title and subtitle are connected to the piece.
3. Ask questions about the piece. As you read, record the questions and keep them in the back of your mind. Look for the answers as you read. If you don’t find the answers, ask the questions the next day in class.
4. Look for the author’s opinion. Compare his or her opinion with your own. Does the author agree or disagree with you?
5. Read a piece to learn new information. Is there anything in the reading that helps you understand the topic better?
6. Make a connection to the piece. Does the piece remind you of an experience, a movie, or information you already know? Does the connections help you relate to a person or situation? Use information you have about the topic to connect more personally to the piece.
7. Who is the author? Do you know anything about the author and his or her style of writing? Is he or she sarcastic or serious? Is he or she politically conservative or liberal? What you know about the author might help you anticipate what is coming in the reading.

Another strategy Tovani employs is to use Comprehension Constructors helping students make sense of what they have read. The students states an initial opinion on  what he has read. Then he writes about what he thinks the author’s opinion is. Finally, the student compares the two.  This would work out well with summary response formats in writing where we ask the students to summarize the author’s point. And then in a subsequent paragraph, we ask them to respond to what the author was saying.

Do I Really Have to Teaching Reading: Part 1

Tovani begins her second book re-emphasizing many of the points she made in her first book regarding asking authentic questions, learning to read is a never ending process, and that good readers and writers constantly monitor their comprehension.  She reviews her 7 strategies good readers and writers use

1. Activating background knowledge and making connections between new and known information
2. Self-questioning the text to clarify ambiguity and deepen understanding
3. Drawing inferences from the text using background knowledge and clues from the text
4. Determining importance in text to separate details from main ideas
5. Employing fix up strategies to repair confusion
6. Using sensory images to enhance comprehension and visualize reading
7. Synthesizing and extending thinking

She also reminds her reader of what fix-up strategies are useful for students:

• make a connection between the text and your life, your knowledge of the world, another text
• make a prediction
• stop and think about what you have already read
• ask yourself a question and try to answer it
• reflect in writing about what you have read
• visualize
• use print conventions
• retell what you have read
• reread
• notice patterns in text structure
• adjust your reading rate: speed up or slow down

Tovani spends some more time explaining the importance of reading instruction in all classes emphasizing how crucial it is to have our students constantly building their own understanding of information rather than the teacher disseminating all the information to the students.  She discusses the power of saying “So What?” to comments given in class in order to further probe our students thinking. We shouldn’t let students simply give superficial or unsubstantiated responses, but instead have them ask of themselves, “So What?” to better their emerging thinking.  How does the comment they are making help them better understand the story?  Tovani reintroduces the Double Entry Diary with two columns to push students’ thinking. In one column, students give their connections to the text where in the second column, they answer “So What” to their connection.  As stated earlier, Tovani wants the students’ comments to help them understand the story better.  I know I do this a lot with my students’ writing asking them to push themselves with their thinking. I can imagine how much better their writing will be by pushing their thinking earlier during their reading. Tovani pushes this further explaining that, “ My job is about teaching kids how to read and think about text is meaningful ways that help them better understand the people around them.” I would even add to this that it helps students first understand themselves then helps them understand others.

Tovani emphasizes the importance of constantly adapting lessons and activities to the needs of your students.  She uses the following four principles to guide her instruction:

1. Assess the text students are expected to read. Is it interesting and pertinent to the instructional goal? Is it at the reading level of the students, or is it too difficult? If the text is too difficult, consider how you will make the text more accessible.

2. Provide explicit modeling of your thinking processes. As an expert reader of your content, identify what you do to make sense of text. Share that information with your students.

3.Define a purpose and help students have a clear reason for their reading and writing. Make sure they know how the information they read and write will be used.

4. Teach students how to hold their thinking and give them opportunities to use the information they’ve held.

Tovani believes that if teachers share the responsibility of learning and thinking in their classrooms with their students, we can enable our students to grow as learners. The responsibility of teaching reading, however, must not fall solely upon the Language Arts teachers’ shoulders. Every teacher is responsible for teaching reading in their content area. Design teachers can teach students how to read charts and graphs differently than Math teachers. We must all model and teach how to read in our specific discipline. As Tovani states, “The problem is that if language arts and English teachers are the only ones teaching reading, students aren’t going to learn how to read different types of texts. Language arts and English teachers are just as burdened by an over-abundance of content as teachers in any other discipline.”

Tovani creates a great parallell between teaching and coaching stressing the importance of modeling with our students, “ It is important to give students models for ways of reading whenever we can. We see this a lot in athletics- coaches are great at this. They never tell a kid, “Just go hit a homer.” They show them where to stand in the bow and how to hold the bat and when to choke up.”  So, why don’t we model for our students more of the behaviors and techniques that make us successful learners?  Mental modeling:

• gives students insights into how good readers and writers make sense of text.
• allows students to see options that are available to them. Students can see how good readers and writers decide what to do
• helps students understand the complexities of reading and writing and that they are ongoing thinking processes

Teachers can model this in their own content area and share how they read a text, what they do when they are reading, what do they do when they are struggling to understand?

Tovani shares modeling the following:

• determine what is important
• recognize and repair confusion
• negotiate difficult reading situations
• start new books
• remember key words in previous chapters and use them in subsequent chapters
• figure out unknown vocabulary
• research topics
• remember what you read
• understand a poem
• understand a word problem
• infer meaning
• recognize and use literary devices

Tovani even gives her own example of breaking down her reading and understanding of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

1. First, I need an overall picture of the novel: figure out the structure of the book

2. Find background information on the author or subject to help understand the novel

3. Ask questions and model asking these questions as you read

4. record questions without concern of answers

Tovani explains how as teachers we become experts in our subjects and with our texts that many times we forget what it is like to read something and have to know it the first time we are assigned a text. Yet, this is what we ask of our students all the time.  She also suggest pairing struggling students with others to aid in their learning.  We need to remember what it is like to be a student.