Tovani Chapter 5

In chapter 4 Tovani continues to share her vast amount of knowledge and insight regarding reading through more personal experiences. This time she addresses the issue of reading speed and comprehension.  She discusses the misconception of “equating fast reading with good reading” and how many of our educators are guilty of this. Tovani then goes on to discuss how good readers will adjust their reading speed in order to grasp more of information. Basically they are determining the speed of their reading based off of how much information they need to remember from the text.

In the classic Tovani way, she discusses an experience she had with a teacher regarding this issue. The teacher came to her because her students did not comprehend a lot of the information from the book they were required to read for her course. Tovani discussed how many teachers who have to teach subject that are very dense and reading heavy, tend to have a problem finding balance of knowing what to teach from the book. Then she gives us some more instructional assistance that teachers can use to help students understand how they should read the text:

1.     Determine what students should comprehend when reading the text.

2.     Try to figure out which sections of the text may give students problems or may be difficult for the to understand.

3.     Show students how you, as a reader, would overcome these difficulties.

4.     Give students tools and strategies that you have used to help you comprehend reading more effectively.

Tovani then goes on to discuss some strategies that can be used to help students grasp concepts more effectively. She bring up the post it notes, margin writing, and journaling again in this chapter. Tovani also discusses offering students the opportunity to relate the text to their lives and have them formulate questions to help them connect with the text. She also discusses history teacher again during this chapter, because they have so much content they feel they need to rush through and also check for understanding. As a history teacher I can totally relate to this section because many times I feel that I am on a time crunch and need to get my students through specific eras or time periods.  Like she says, standards and benchmakrs or testing makes this even more difficult for history teachers. We teach about time but are always fighting against time as well.

Lastly, Tovani discusses reading voices and how there are basically two kinds of reading voices, reciting and conversational.  The conversational voice is used when doing the reading such as asking questions to yourself while reading. The reciting voice occurs when you read but are not fully engaged and have to go back and read it over a few times to comprehend what you just read. She ends with a few more important teaching points:

1.     Its okay for you to skim, skip, or scan readings and be selective about what you want to share with your students.

2.     Be specific as possible about the instructional purpose of the reading.

3.     Let students know what they will be using the information they read in your course for in the future.

Once again, another great chapter!