Addler Chapter 1

Addler Chapter 1 gave many tips on how to become a better reader and how to make the text work for you. The author seemed to be very philisophical, and delved into description of books with all the power of his vernacular. Every sentence seemed to be redefining the last as he weaved his way from what is a book, to how do we make the book work for us, and finally arriving on "books aren't alive...you have to learn how to get what you want from them by asking and answering your own questions." I think the purpose of this chapter reading was to show the science of book reading. This article was very challenging to get through, mainly due to the heavy load of vocabulary but also the lack of anecdotal stories that we have seen in Tovani. I found myself zoning in the middle of the article, or skimming over several areas because I felt like the author was reexplaining ideas over and over. For example, the author describes a pitcher as active, a catcher as active, and a book as passive because it isn't doing anything in the relationship. He compared the book to the ball, and a catcher to the reader. I can visualize a catcher and a ball just fine but right when I do begin to visualize it, he switches analogies and begins on a new topic. The main idea I got from it was that not all books are entertaining, and we need to pay attention so that we can learn what we need to. Using the baseball analogy I guess I could say "you don't always want to play baseball, but to be a good catcher, you need to practice".

Tovani Chapter 6

In chapter 6, Tovani once again begins her anecdotal stories about the places she has taught reading. She encourages students thinking and challengeing not only text but pictures as well. She gets the students to begin asking questions about articles that they don't care about, and also gives more note taking strategies. Apart from the classic highligher and sticky notes, she describes quad entry journals, double entry diaries, and question recording. In this chapter there are many good strategies to remember, as well as stories to remember them by. The story that begins the chapter revolves around a picture. The picture is a fake of a shark, bridge, and a navy seal. Without saying more than "what do you think", Tovani gets the students to challenge the picture, recall previous knowledge, and question the validity of the picture. We as adults do this all the time. Any article we are given, be it school related or personal intrest, we evaluate the valitidy of it and its importance in our lives. Students do not and will not, we teach it to them. I feel like I keep saying that in all of these journal entries, that we do and they don't. I realize that is the point of these journal entries, learning strategies and understanding the things we already do that they need to do to be successful. I especially liked the area on tools for holding thinking in the reading. I agree with Tovani in that highlighters get old and sticky notes fail to be successful after a while. However, students need to learn how to use these tools. These tools are all instruments to keep us engaged in the reading and to help recall this information after we understand it. This is especially challenging for me, I am terrible at writing sticky notes. I have always been successful at understanding text and highlighting all the important parts to me. Give me a week, and I will forget everything about what I read prior. I need to study everything and keep it current. I feel like that is one thing missing from this chapter, or perhaps even the whole book. What about studying? How does reading encorporate into studying. Or is it just the traditional note studying cramming? I would like to see something about review reading in this book sometime.

Chapter 5 Tovani

Chapter 5 is entitled "why am I reading this", and for good reason. The chapter focuses on what teachers are assigning and why they are assigning it. Tovani urges teachers to know what they are assigning and what is expected of the students when they read it. Some teachers blindly teach curriculum that they think they ought to and others don't know how to get students to turn off their reciting voice. Several elements are presented that interrupt students reading and hurt their chances of deeper understanding and value for the text. This will ultimately turn them off to reading of any kind if it is not remedied. The beginning of the chapter urges teachers to "kick it up a notch" or at least that's how I see it. The figures shown are all great illustrations of self challenging quizzes that get the teacher in the learners shoes. If more teachers would do this, I think they would realize the problem areas and figure out how to manage their time more effectively. Most often in my high school I saw the schedule as follows: bell rings, kids get in seats, meet and greet, kids get out books, teacher begins lecturing and encourages note taking, bell rings, catches teacher off guard, students hurriedly pack up, teacher blurts out some instructions on homework, and finally encourages students to study what they have...learned. What did they learn? They learned that the teacher can talk in their reciting voice from lecture notes they have had for the last 10 years. This doesn't give off any indication of enthusiasm for the subject, current issue encoporation, or personal relation of the subject to the students. As teachers, Tovani encourages us to give a purpose to why we are teaching, and what we are asking the students to read. In the previous scenario I explained a typical day for myself, and in that day the worksheets or reading assignments were given in the last 10 seconds where all the students wanted to hear was "have a great day and by the way you don't have class tommorow". We need to give more direction to the students about what they are reading and why it is important. As college students, we have chosen career paths, and in each of those paths we have reading to do. Some of us do this reading for entertainment, and some of us do it because we have to read it to pass. For entertainment I like to read science articles; they keep me current on science issues, and they keep me looking forward to the future. Some articles in my classes however are very dull, involving cytocianin red algae blooms causing eutrophication in the fresh waters of lake michigan. I give myself purpose in reading these articles but students won't do it themselves. We need to encourage focus in purpose and encourage students to find things they like to read as well. I think the author omitted a good point as well; if there is time, why not assign students a reading assignment of their own choosing.

tovani chp 3-4

In these 2 chapters there were a wide variety of subjects. Tovani went from an industrial technologist teacher who couldn't see how to teach reading, to choosing new textbooks for the classroom. She explains how some subjects have reading that aren't visible on the surface but they are deffinently present. One of the best ways she guides the author is apparent in these chapters and I believe it is the use of the varied topics. If you hate history or love English, then you only need to read a few more pages to get past or to these topics. Tovani keep these reader interested with her anecdotal stories and tips for teachers in these following chapters. Chapter 3 in Tovani's book began with a subject not familiar to many readers or to me. She is approached by a man who teaches a class in industrial technology. He states very firmly that he doesn't have to teach reading in his class and there isn't any reading to teach. I sided with the man immidiately and thought quite similarly in the beginning of this class. I don't always probe for the reading content in subjects or try to figure out how to help teach it. I think this is mainly due to my area of teaching and my grade level. high school, however, is still a place with struggling readers, and no matter how much they may like a subject, how can they learn it if they can't read it? Farther though the chapter Tovani goes on to illustrate more ways of helping struggling readers find meaning in books they don't like or learn new methods of note taking while reading. I felt like I was in the classroom when Tovani was being challenged by the young girl about "asking herself questions she already knew" from the text "Frankenstien". Tovani had to work quick to keep her credit as an expert in the room but also model her thinking to the students. I too worry about keeping credit with the students. I had a college proffessor at Wright State University in Ohio that taught Calculus. He taught straight from the book everyday and did the homework problems just as he was expected to do. One day, however, a student asked him a question about more advanced math. This student was obviously a math major and was quite interested in learning more than the basics from this professor. The professor didn't know his answer and shrugged him off by saying "we aren't working on that, you'll have to find that out on your own". The way he answered it made me feel uncomfortable, like he didn't know anything beyond what he was teaching, and that he had been caught off guard. I don't want to be a teacher like that, I want to be an expert in my field, but also be able to model learning for my students. The next chapter was best summed up in a paragraph on page 40, "give students something to read that is worthy of their time, something that they actually have the potential to understand-and maybe even finding a piece of text that will turn kids on to the content". As soon as I read these words I instantly agreed. When this book even starts on history or anything with social studies I get bored fast. This, however, can be remedied by giving students a piece of the topic that interests them. Current politics in comparison to whats going on in the class can go a long way to keeping students interested. The text suggests supplying students with several books in sets instead of one massive textbook packed with vocab and boring info. In this way the text is more descriptive and detailed about each word and story.

Tovani chapter 1-2

The book "Do I really have to teach reading?" starts with an anecdotal story from the author, a female English teacher. She recalls a reading content lecture where she was to help a Biology class with reading strategies. In this class she was already expected to be boring and it was until the author, Cris Tovani, thought of reading the Biology textbook in a different way. The author describes in the first chapter a new look at reading and understanding content. Any subject can be exciting to teachers who pick that area and are gifted at studying it. These teachers, however, do not always know how to excite others and inspire them to study it further. Cris even says herself that she struggles to find meaning in Biology past the "get the grade, go to college" mentality. She finds meaning in Biology in the real world from a simple man sneezing on a bus. Simple things like sneezing spread germs and germs are dangerous if you know what they are and how they work. But they can also be exciting to study and learn about if you know where to look. The chapters on Virology in a Biology book are a great place to go and this is exactly where she points to for herself and the students she teaches. The second chapter focuses on problem students in an English class. They struggle to find meaning in a simple reading. English isn't always the easiest subject to study and one of the best ways to approach it is to ask why it matters. According to Cris, asking what you can relate the story to is one of the best tactics. One of the problem children who berates other students' answers was placated by this tactic and began busily working. Cris suggests a new approach to learning, one that doesn't involve grading, but rather focuses on ungraded work that encourages self reflection.