Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Do I really have to teach reading?

As I was looking for a book to read one that came across caught my eye. Do I really have to teach reading?  Going into math education I never thought about having to teach reading. However, thinking about it now it makes sense. Math is not only just numbers and understand how to read a question will be very important to my learners.
Chapter one, “I’m the stupid lady from Denver” I would like to share a paragraph with you from the book.
“As I prepared for the lesson the week before my trp. I kept saing to myself, “Whjo cares? How does the stupid chapter on viruses affect my life?” I worried that if I couldn’t get excited about it, how would I engage students I had never met? (Tovani, page 2)
She continues her story about how she needed a plan. She used a real life situation about herself in a plane were a man was sick and she would cover her mouth feeling the germs landing on her. She used this life lesson to tell a story about how her question propel her thoruhg chapters on viruses to help hear understand and learn. Stories will always be good in lessons and to help students stay interested in what you have to say.
“There is an importance of noticing what good readers do when they are constructing meaning” (tovani, page 5). Something relevant to this class as we should learn what good readers do and how they make sense of things in text. What will you get out of this reading? Maybe nothing but confusion or maybe intrest in wanting to learn more or read the book for yourself.
One thing I really agree with is the importance of teaching many strategies well. Albert Einstein said if you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough. I agree fully and this is something that scares me in teaching. Will there be something I cant do well? I’m sure there will be but I have built a community of teachers and friend a network of people I can collaborate with. This helps.
All in all the book has been funny and interesting while learning things so far like storytelling and planning ahead. It’s a great way to see how we can help model our reading process for students.
My next blog will be about supplementing ideas to use required textbooks.


6 comments:

  1. Steve, it seems like we have very similar views on this topic. As we are both planning to be math teachers. I'm glad you found a book that you can enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe we all shared the skeptical notion about the importance of teaching reading in our classes. The more I read in my book written by Amy Benjamin "But, I am not a reading teacher", the more the importance of reading become more clear.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I believe we all shared the skeptical notion about the importance of teaching reading in our classes. The more I read in my book written by Amy Benjamin "But, I am not a reading teacher", the more the importance of reading become more clear.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I really like the quote, “there is an importance of noticing what good readers do when they are constructing meaning.” It is a great reminder to take notice of texts that you like and figure out why you like them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really like the quote, “there is an importance of noticing what good readers do when they are constructing meaning.” It is a great reminder to take notice of texts that you like and figure out why you like them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I liked the quote about teaching at a 10th grade level "By the way, what exactly is a tenth-grade level?"

    ReplyDelete