Chapter 9 and Final Comments

It is great to hear Tovani's discription of her day. I think that's why I like her so much she is real... Her advice to "focus on what is important and, as much as possible, ignore the rest,"(p. 118) could not be more timely to me (probably all of you, too).

Final Comments:
Tovani is still teaching. You can tell by her book that she is a "real teacher" who deals with all the daily struggles that we all face. I appreciate her frankness about not knowing all the answers.

Thank you all for being willing to join this book club. I have enjoyed reading each of your comments. Together, I think we have learned a little about the importance of teaching content reading in high school.

I look forward to having another professional book club next year. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Paula

Chapters 7 & 8

Group work has always been a challenge for me. I am glad Tovani has given me some tips for impoving it. Chapter 7's "fishbowl" pgs. 92-93 is a great idea. My student's need so much help with this. I need help knowing when to stay out of a group's discussion, too.
Chapter 8's assessment information was also helpful to me. I have had kids complain that I haven't given enough tests. I have told them that I am assessing them everyday, but that didn't help one kid. He was so programed to memorize and regurgitate that he just got angry at me. Now I see that I could use the "conversion calendar" on p. 109 to help solve a portion of this problem. I already use a type of reading/writing folder for a grade, but I think I can use some of Tovani's ideas from pages 110-113 to help me fine tune them. I will have to say that having conferences with my students is one of the best things I think I do. I keep a log each time I confer with them and write down what skill/piece of writing/idea/problem we talk about. This really helps shape my lessons. The BIG problem I with conferences is TIME (and sometimes keeping an eye on those "challenging" students while I'm trying to confer).

Chapters Five and Six

This time I am going to let you all go first. I want to see what you all have to say before I perhaps color the water. I will post a comment for chapters five and six in this sections after I have read your comments. I thought it would be interesting to hear what you all had to say first. Please post your chapters five and six comments under this thread.

Chapters Three and Four

I can't wait to hear what you all have to say about these two chapters.

"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." p.25
This is exactly what I kept thinking about when we were looking at the new HSAP release items in the faculty meeting on March 15. All of those test questions were under the ELA portion of the test, yet they are not necessarily the type things I would ever cover in an English class. I'm sure you could tell I was nervous about the bar-code release item.

I do "Mental Modeling" p. 27 with my reading and my writing in my classes. I'll have to be honest, it was hard at first; I felt kind of silly saying my thoughts out loud, but it works. It really helps my students. It helped them see that reading isn't a "mindless" word calling activity. I identified with the girl who was almost finished with Frankenstein but did not have a clue what she had read. I will be interested in seeing how this works other content areas. If you try it, let me know how it works.

The "Real Rigor" section of Chapter 4 certianly made me question myself and what I may be putting some of my poorer readers through.
"...some teachers might be confusing rigor with unrealistic expectations. Is it rigor to assign a tough textbook chapter when no one in the class can understand it?" p. 40
"When students are always given text that is too hard for them to read on their own, they begin to associate school reading with reading that is pointless." p. 41
The state has just recently invested quite a huge amount of money and time developing modules for English I and English II which have texts sets in them. I am involved in the development of the English II curriculum. Come by my room and take a look at some of the cool text sets. I wish we had an unlimited supply of money to develop text sets in social studies and science.

Of course there is plenty more I could comment on in these two chapters, but I prefer to hear what you all have to say.

**If you have a chance, check out the article Emma put a link to in the previous blog. It addresses the problem of secondary and middle school students who are poor readers. The schools took drastic measures. Gee, I wonder what Cris Tovani thinks about their solution...

Chapters One and Two

Tovani makes so much sense.
Here are a few quotes that really resounded with me as a secondary teacher:
“…learning to read doesn’t end in the elementary grades. Reading becomes more complex as students move into middle and high school, and teachers need to help students understand difficult text.”(p.5)
I have heard so many times, “they need to know how to read before they get to high school”, while this is true, isn’t it also true that the older students get, what we ask them to read also becomes more difficult?

I have never thought about what I do as a “good reader”. I know I will be able to use the “fix-up strategies” (p. 6) with my struggling readers.

“It wasn’t their fault that they were making stupid connections. It was mine, because I hadn’t shown them how a meaningful connection could deepen their understanding of the text.” (p. 12)
I see that Tovani is reflective about her teaching. There are many times when I need to just calm down, sit back, and really think about why my students are responding the way they are to my content.
I love the “What Works” questions and “teaching points” on pages 20 and 21.

Welcome to B-C's Cyber Book Club!

I am so glad you decided to join us. I think we will learn a lot together as we read Tovani's book.