I Read It, But I Don't Get It

I've always been someone who reading came naturally to, so in reading Cris Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It, the author's personal experiences as a struggling reader as well as the experiences of her students made me realize how it is important to teach reading as an active skill, and to be aware of the difficulties some children may have with reading a text.

In particular, I'm now more aware of this idea that, as Tovani said it, ""[we] have a decision to make: teach the reading or the reader?", which may come up in our classrooms when our students are struggling with a text (Tovani 39). It's more important for us as teachers to teach students how to read with the purpose of gaining understanding, and maybe even for enjoyment, rather than just to be able to fill in answers on a test. I loved how, when faced with a class struggling with canto 34 of The Divine Comedy, Tovani made the decision to change her test from asking what happened in the text to where they got lost, when they realized that they were lost, and what caused them to become lost. This activity seemed to have a greater impact in helping students approach an intimidating text compared to having them take and fail a test.

I also love the use of "fix-up strategies" that Tovani laid out in chapter 5. By having her students form connections between the text and their previous knowledge, make predictions, talk about what they've read, ask questions, reflect, visualize, use print conventions, retell what they've read, reread, notice patterns, and adjust their reading speed, she is able to isolate and address readers' issues as they come up without having to hold their hand. Earlier, in chapter 4, she has a discussion with a student named Dan, who wants to know why he needs to know what he knows and what he doesn't know, and like Tovani, I came to the realization that my role as a teacher is not to find out what students do and don't know, because like she said, we as educators can't read minds. Rather, we have to provide our students with the tools to address issues they run into when they come to a text or problem that they don't know or understand.

I could go on, but to put it simply, there was a lot of useful tools and strategies for teaching reading in this text. and I feel like it's probably one of the best 'textbooks' about education that I've read. Rather than addressing the process of teaching (particularly literature) with broad, general statements, this text got into the nitty-gritty and nailed out a solid methodology for the teaching of reading. As I go further into my practicum, I think this will become more and more useful to me, so I'm glad we read it for this class.