Tovani Chapter 2

In chapter 2 Tovani takes on another personal experience but this time into her own classroom. She discusses one of her activities in which she had students write about connections they had to the reading she assigned.  When they came together to discuss their connections, after each student shared this thoughts one of the students would say “so what?” This put tings into perspective for Tovani and she knew that she needed to do something different because students were not really making meaningful connections. This lead to Tovani utilizing double entry diaries,  in which students would use while doing their readings. They still took notes on post it notes but also addressed the “so what” question (on the left side of the diary).

After the intial use of the double entry diary , students felt that it was difficult but soon after they started to make deeper connections to the material. Then they started to enjoy the diaries and take more from the reading. The double entry journal is a great tool to use with students because it allows them time to process the information and expand on what connection they made to the readings that were insightful and meaningful. 

Next, Tovani discusses the four principles  or elements that she uses in her own classroom that has helped students be better readers. These principles are intended to not only help the student but also help the teacher to organize reading in a simple manner. Tovani’s principles are:

1.     Assess the text that students are going to read to ensure that it is readable, interesting, easily accessible, and relevant.

2.      Offers students a foundation of how to make sense of the readings by modeling the process yourself.

3.     Discuss the relevance and purpose for reading the text with the students.

4.     Give students an opportunity to apply what they have interpreted and what they have made connections to.

Tovani continues to discuss some of the problems teachers have when teaching reading. She discusses how many teachers want their students to “do it all” which is a bad idea because although we need to provide our students with a variety of literacy tools. However, Tovani believe that it is in our best interest to keep things simple and basic. It is more important that we make sure that readings are interesting and exciting to our students as well as the assessments to use in conjunction with the readings. Tovani also discusses a few other teaching points that can be very useful when teaching reading.  These teaching points are:

1.     Utilize various strategies because different strategies work for different students.

2.     Encourage students to ask question they have regarding the text. Avoid using end of chapter reading questions.

3.     Engage students in rereading and returning to text to build upon their preexisting knowledge.

This books just keeps getting better and better! I cannot wait to see what happens in the future chapters as well as what other strategies Tovani has for us!