Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Tovani - Coming clean about reading!
Finally. That's my first response after reading Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It. It's about time that an educational book is honest about what is going on in our schools. Schools place so much emphasis on decoding skills that they completely forget that a a big,--- actually HUGE part of being a good reader means that a student can actually comprehend what she or he is reading. Tovani made me think about how much schools love to label their readers as being in level "m" but fail to realize that this readers do not understand a word they are reading. I also love how aside from providing us teachers with ideas to use in the classroom, Tovani isn't ashamed to write about her own experiences with reading. I think this is what makes her so credible and endearing to her students. What I also like about her is that she doesn't expect teachers to do all the work. She sets the expectations for the students and lets them know that as good readers, they are responsible for making sense of their reading, not just sit back and ignore things.
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Yes. For some reason, I thought it would be counterintuitive to reveal personal information to students. I suppose Tovani explaining how she used to cheat on her writing assignments isn't too personal, but my high school teachers never revealed much about themselves. It seemed like a code they lived by. Tovani's 'techniques seem very effective. I also liked that she made a space for her students to get stuck: she made it comfortable for them to tell her when they didn't understand something, which I find very useful. The institution of education seems to place a lot of emphasis on students having the answers, but it's just as important that they don't. Why else would we be there?
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