I Read It, But I Don't Get It by Cris Tovani

        Cris Tovani’s pedagogical book “I Read It, But I Don’t Get It” provides the reader with several strategies for helping students develop their reading comprehension skills. Her strategies help readers with a variety of issues; reluctant readers, those who quit when they get stuck in a passage, and the ones who can decode the words, but miss the meaning. I was glad that Tovani didn’t only include students with obvious reading struggles, but also readers who seem like strong readers. Tovani provides techniques that don’t allow students to slip through the cracks like the perceived “good readers” she mentioned had; her students couldn’t simply SparkNote the novel and pass a quiz, they had to think in order to complete the activities she assigned. In order to ensure all of her students got the most out of their reading, Tovani worked to help them develop their independent thinking skills. This is something I want to ensure I do as a teacher; it doesn’t matter how much content you feed into your students if they don’t have the ability to make sense of it. Tovani writes: “We can choose to cover the curriculum or we can choose to teach students to inquire. If we choose to cover the curriculum, our students will fail. If we teach our students to inquire, we will have a well of information from which to teach and our students will have a purpose (93). I think it will be difficult to find a proper balance between teaching content and teaching learning strategies, but Tovani provided a lot of helpful information for breaking from the “teaching to the test/book” that can consume teachers.

        Tovani emphasized having students make personal knowledge and experience connections to their reading. I love this idea and would use it in my classroom. In my unit plan, I have been trying to find ways for my students to make personal knowledge connections between the texts, but I did not think to incorporate personal experience connections to the reading. I will now be using Tovani’s “Text-to-Self Connections” sheet on page 125 to encourage students to make personal experience connections when they read the assigned texts for my unit plan. I not only want my students to understand their reading, but I want them to understand why it can and should matter to them.

I was really intrigued about the section on crafting “pondering questions;” Tovani dedicated an entire class period for having her students think about questions they had about anything. I think this is an awesome way to inspire students to start thinking about what they wonder in the text they are reading. If they can create good questions about their observations in life, they can create good questions about texts they struggle to understand. I also think this activity would boost student’s confidence in their independent ideas. In her implementation, Tovani made sure that each student's question was valued and important. She emphasized that the questions didn’t need to be answered right then or ever, but they should inspire reflection. In being able to form good questions about life in general, Tovani’s students were better equipped with the skills to make questions that helped them better understand their reading.

        I enjoyed reading Tovani’s book and found it really helpful. There is no single way to get students to understanding their reading, therefore it is important for teachers to provide their students with a register of methods for working through difficult texts. Once students begin to feel more confident in their ability to use reading comprehension strategies, they will begin developing the independent thinking skills necessary for being a good reader.