Thursday, July 7, 2011
Welcome!
Thank you all so much for taking on this project with me. It is my sincere hope that it will actually make your lives easier and more fulfilled! On this page, we will discuss the book, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? which we have been reading (duh)...feel free to post all thoughts about chapters 1-3 (you'd better not be reading ahead, Bessemer--we all know what a go-getter you are!!) and comment on someone's post--golden rule applies here :) Thanks again--you guys are awesome.
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Chapters 1-3:
ReplyDeleteHow do we get students to care about a text? In order to actually pay attention to what he’s reading, a student has to invest in it. Otherwise, he is just going through the motions. I have always liked the idea of raising questions. To quote Cris Tovani, “I can’t ask any old question - it has to be one that I truly am curious about . . . As my colleagues Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis (2000) note in their book Strategies That Work, ‘A reader with no questions might as well abandon the book.’ (p.82)” (p.3) It makes perfect sense to raise questions to set purpose for reading. We have all been doing this for a long time in our classrooms. We, as teachers, can help students to come up with questions to which they actually care to find answers. We can pique their interest and draw them into questioning. The trick is to figure out how we teach students to come up with those questions on their own once we aren’t around to help them anymore. Isn’t that the point? To help students to become life-long readers and seekers of knowledge? How do we know that our students have bought into continuing this practice once we’re not hovering over their shoulders? So I guess my word for the week is beyond, as in how do get students to carry these strategies beyond our classrooms?
Other questions I had:
1. How does teaching reading comprehension strategies “free” one from having to teach grammar rules, etc.? Don’t kids still need to understand sentence structure and parts of speech to become effective writers? Aren’t we still responsible for teaching students to write as well as read?
2. When modeling Frankenstein, Mrs. Tovani stumbled upon a reader who was struggling to decode the text. She said that the text was obviously too difficult for him. Then she helped him by reading to him and recording his questions. How will this help him in the long run? After she left the class, wasn’t he still responsible for reading the book? Just setting the purpose won’t be enough for a student who can’t even decode the text, will it? So what do we do when the required text is too difficult?
I really like the "What Works" section on page 35. A lot of my kids abandon what I know to be some really great books, all because they get bored, or the book gets hard or confusing, and as a result, they miss out on some of the greatest books!! Grrrr!
ReplyDeleteI think the 3 ideas Tovani shares are really practical, but it always seems a tad easier to read about or listen to someone else doing it than doing it myself in my room :( It takes a little time, but I think it's worth it for kids to see that we, as teachers, were not necessarily born good readers--we also had to work on it!!
What struck a chord with me was on pg. 16 was when she said, "I realized that the problem with the first sticky note activity was that I had stopped students' thinking too soon. I needed to get them to extend their thinking in other ways beyond the first reading." This was when she reflected on her lesson for the day when the students had made connections. She needed them to bring their thinking back to the text and not just make a connection for the sake of making a connection. I have definitely had this moment many times when I realize that students are not really 'using' the strategy the way I intended. Yes, they made connection, but it wasn't deepening their understanding of the text. Which, let's face it, is the main purpose of using a strategy effectively. And I want to make sure that I am always reinforcing that with my students. No matter how many times I think I teach a 'great lesson', it seems I could always be digging deeper with my students. I don't want to end their thinking too soon and I think this example from Tovani's teaching really drove that home for me. I think gaining more experience teaching is the only way to become the most effective at this.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I struggle with teaching the strategies, yet making sure the students are thinking in this way. It's such a hard concept to evaluate with students on a daily basis. But we don't want to just teach a whole bunch of strategies and then walk away from the purpose of them. She writes on pg. 20, "Remember that strategies are only options for thinking." A strategy is not just an activity, we want our students to change their way of thinking while reading to become the best they can be. Juggling all of that makes for a hectic day in the reading world!!
I thought it was interesting to see how these reading strategies are used successfully, as opposed to how they were implemented in my reading classroom when I was forced to teach it. I now realize that the lady didn't really know what she was talking about and didn't care to really get the students thinking (this was in CPS, not at Grove).
ReplyDeleteIf I had to choose a word that summed up what I took away from these chapters it would have to be "awareness." It wasn't really until a couple of years ago that I became cognizant of the active reading processes that I took while reading a text (non-fiction particularly). By the time I was aware of the skills that I could model to my students, the district has shifted its focus in science from literacy to hands-on inquiry. I still try to fit it in where applicable but the opportunities are not as frequent as they used to be. This is an issue that I can see in the rest of the science department as well. I could relate to the interaction the author had to the industrial technology teacher because I could see some of our staff members (even myself at one point) having the same attitude (most likely to also be corrected and concede later that they actually do teach some sort of specialized reading skills).
I agree with what Janine said above, that to be most effective we must constantly be digging deeper, allowing the students to make endless connections. With the amount of content that we have to cover in a given year, it is hard to give students freedom in class to extend something that they have learned into a completely student-driven unit - but if there is a genuine interest established through these connections the students are more likely to want to extend the lessons on their own, taking ownership of their learning and making them like-long learners.
On page 5 Tovani states, “Good readers separate themselves from struggling readers when they recognize that they are confused and then do something to repair meaning. Good readers use ‘fix-up’ strategies, which can be taught to readers at any age.” The list that she includes on page 6 is very familiar to teachers of reading. We teach and model these “fix-up” strategies so often, students know what they are and what to do; however, I have found that many times students don’t want to implement them. They don’t want to stop and self- monitor….they feel like the goal is to get through a text, but not necessarily understand it. Understanding text takes effort, and my biggest frustration is when they don’t want to put forth the effort to implement the “fix-up” strategy. I would like to change my students’ way of thinking, so they see the need to self-monitor and fix as a necessity, not a laborious activity.
ReplyDeleteOne question I have is this……several times throughout chapters 1-3 Tovani discusses giving up teaching some content to focus on teaching thinking and comprehension strategies. I can understand the frustration that teachers feel because, yes, comprehension instruction is important, but knowing basic information is also essential. Every year it frightens me as to what basic factual / content information students “don’t know.” I fear that too many teachers have given up the teaching of content to work on the teaching of thinking/reading skills. A delicate balance is what is needed. How do we maintain that balance when both are equally as essential and important.
We, as teachers, have a bit of a Catch 22 on our hands. We eliminate content in order to focus on strategies. However, students need the content background in order to make meaningful connections.
ReplyDeleteIt seems we all see the struggle between lessening the content and teaching the strategies!
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean, Falco (or should I say, "anonymous") when you say that you do teach these strategies and then kids simply chose not to use them---sooooo frustrating!!
Chapters 4-6:
ReplyDeleteI love the suggestion in Chapter 4 of using text sets to help struggling readers build background knowledge and make connections between texts. I wonder, however, how we can encourage students to seek the background for themselves upon leaving our classrooms. This obviously won’t happen overnight, but perhaps with time and practice, students can learn to supplement their own reading. In Chapter 5, I also like the generic list of questions that help students to seek the purpose of reading a text assigned by a teacher who has not set the purpose for them. I feel like this is such a valuable skill for students to work on. How many times have I had to seek out the purpose of an assigned piece of text? The answer is too many to count. The fact is that in both higher education as well as the workforce beyond we are forced to read texts that don’t particularly strike our fancy. However, we must find a way to plug through them.
On a side note, I feel the need to mention one thing that I think our relatively new TCI social studies curriculum has done well, according to Tovani, is to remove some of the content in favor of emphasizing concepts. There is far less text in this book than our previous text. The TCI program also does a nice job of setting the purpose for the reading. Admittedly, this program took some getting used to on my part. As a social studies teacher, I was reluctant to give up the content. However, after some time and practice, I do believe the change was for the best.
In Chapter 6, I like the idea of gradually giving students more autonomy when it comes to choosing the tools they use to better understand their own reading. When given the option to choose the methods they feel work best, students are more likely to carry on the habit once they leave our classrooms. Isn’t that what we’ve all been searching for? Could this be at least part of the answer? Oh, please, Chris Tovani, say it’s so!
I try everyday in my classroom to use accessible text with my my students--and as a literacy teacher, I think it's a lot easier for me to do so, but I always love the idea of science and social studies teachers using book bags from the library (trade books on any given topic), but I can see the challenge in doing things this way. With the kids I teach, I DEFINITELY lean more toward shorter, high interest pieces, but I always have to wonder: am I setting them up for failure later when, all of a sudden, they have to read a huge, insanely hard novel? I'd like to think I'll be giving them at least the tools to wade their way (be it slowly) through it.
ReplyDeleteIt is a daily goal of mine to give my students a purpose for reading and challenge them to come up with one for themselves if there seems to be none. As an adult, I don't often pick things up that I don't ACTUALLY want to read--however, we ask kids to do that all the time. Where will their focus and concentration go if we don't at least teach them how to give themselves a road map and a goal? Well, who knows, but not anywhere in the book/article, that I know for sure!
The frustration then, with the autonomy, becomes (as some of you have already mentioned), the kids who know what to do to comprehend BUT JUST DON'T DO IT--GRRRRRRRR!! WHY NOT? WHY DO YOU LIKE BEING CONFUSED??!!! Deeeeeep breath....allllll I can do it keep trying, right?!
Ok, Chapter 7...group work...hmmm...I see the benefit, and I love when kids learn from each other, but dang, does that take a lot of work to set up and practice. Plus, with 6 kids, it's hard to have real, actual groups that matter, but I will try again--I generally do a lot more partner work, myself. I DEFINITELY agree with giving them a real, concrete job to do when they are in those groups!!
ReplyDeleteCh. 8...I really like the list on pg. 107 for assessment ideas. I'm not a big "end of the chapter" or end of the story" test-giver myself, and I do think assessment should drive instruction, but I'll be honest--I need to get better at that part. Ok, so what if a kid doesn't get it, but everyone else does? Isn't that life?! I really like her idea of creating goals that they ACTUALLY work on, but so far, I have not tried that. The calendar thing? Not for me--although I have a small enough class that I get to talk to every kid on a pretty regular basis, so I'm lucky in that regard.
Ch. 9...I like that poem she used!! I'm glad I re-read this book as there were things I meant to do and never actually got around do--back when I was just figuring out how to really teach--oh, wait--I still am!! I do plan on using a lot of the reproducibles in the back of the book, though --that's for sure :)