Final Thoughts

Well if you read any of my blogs thank you and if I bored you I'm sorry but please go back and read and read it again :) JK. There were only 9 chapters so I had to finish with my own thoughts. 

 

Cris Tovani taught elementary school for tens years before becoming a high school reading specialist and English teacher. She is the author of many other books and developer for the Denver-based Public education and business coalition (PEBC). Some of her other books if you are interested are I read, it, but I don’t get it and videotape sets Thoughtful Readin and Comprehending content.

 

I really enjoyed this fun book with some great ideas on how not only to teach but teach you. It seemed to be the theme of all the chapters. Tovani is a teacher that encouraged her students to read and re-read. Tovani thought her students to learn how to turn nothing into something and way too much into an assignment. 

 

 

 

I have learned that you should put yourself on the line "If teachers are going to make the process of reading visible, they can't sit safely at the edge. As older, more experienced readers, they have an obligation to talk aloud about groping for understand or reaching for a genuine reading" Dennie Palmer Wolf.

 

I just read in Reading Rockets on Autism and Comprehension http://www.readingrockets.org/article/36973/ one of our assignments about thinking aloud. If we read to our students and ask questions along the way we can help our students learn how and where to stop and think about the importance of what the write is saying. Like this class we were challenged with challenging pieces of text and ourselves struggle. 

 

Tovani would talk a lot about struggling and continue to challenge ourselves to become better teachers. I must have a reason for reading the piece. There must be something in it that will make my life as a teacher or a person better. If the piece isn’t going to entertain, teach, or improve my life in some way, I throw it out. (Tovani, p.61). 

 

She teaching building on the experiences gained in her own classroom. She does note some scientific evidence but this was from her own hands on experience. She also quoted a lot of her colleagues from different disciplines.

 

A recap of the book:

1. Examples of how teachers can model their reading process for students
2. Ideas for supplementing and enhancing the use of required textbooks.
3. Detailed descriptions of specific strategies taught in context.
4. Stores from different high school classrooms to show how reading instruction varies according to content.
5. Samples of student work, including both struggling readers and college-bound seniors
6. Variety of “comprehension constructors”. Guides designed to help student recognize and capture their thinking in writing while reading.
7. Guidance on assessing students
8. Tips for balancing content and reading instruction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9

Well the last chapter in the book is titled did I miss anything? Did I miss everything? It's a fun final thoughts and encourages you to be your best and you will not always have the answers.

“Dear ms. Tovani:

Can I redo yesterdays work? I need to get an A. I am sorry that I drew all over and had illegible handwriting. Please?”

Tovani writes yes next to his request. I had to think about this and I like the idea of students redoing their work even for a better grade. In collage I have had so many high stake tests and sometimes I would get a bad grade but know how to do the work. The idea of this class was to read and re read not just read it write and that’s it. We encourage you to read it and read it again. Circle stuff and keep in mind the title and relate it to your real life.

No matter the content Tovini writes “I don’t see how we can be teachers of this content without spending at least some of our time with students helping them learn how to read about it” (Tovani, p.121).

“One-Shot assessments such as chapter tests don’t help me teach. They measure finite knowledge, but don’t give any information about the way students think” (Tovani, p104).

How do we make our student become better thinkers? The theme of this chapter is about assessing strategy’s goal setting. Here is a list from I would like to share with you that I felt may be very helpful my class and maybe yours.

1. Activation of background knowledge: Can students access existing information to make connections between new and know information? Is there evidence that makes connections help students to relate to subject matter in a way that enhances interest and deepens understanding?
2. Student questioning of text: can students ask useful and authentic questions about the text in a way that enhances understanding and encourages deeper understanding?
3. Drawing conclusions and making inferences: can students combine their background knowledge with textual evidence to draw logical conclusions?
4. Monitoring comprehension and using fix-up strategies’: can student recognize signals and indicate they are confused.
5. Determining importance in text: Can students identify different purposes for reading? Do students recognize unique feature of texts, author styles, and similarities in topical information to distinguish important ideas.

Tovani talks about how she uses or begins every class with goal setting. Starting with brainstorming and writing goals. Each student will be responsible to choose one. They frequently revisit these goals through the year. I really like the idea of goals and revisiting these goals. I also think it would be good to ask the students to tell me when they have made their goals or not. We can discuss it and even change the goal if we find it to be unreachable. With goals Tovani recommends using calendars and why not have weekly goals. She even has one calendar that I think is cool were each day they get points from 1-20 for that day.

Here are some tips for making a calendar and making them work:

1. Have a tray in the room were calendars go every day.
2. Respond daily.
3. Make the calendars worth doing.
4. Decide how to manage lost calendars.
5. Consider who will use the calendars.
6. Experiment and vary the use of calendars.

I don’t really know how I can use them in a math class but they can be as simple as turning in homework or doing homework assignments and turning them in on time.

What works?

1. Decide what you want to assess. Give a variety of ways for student stop demonstrate understanding.
2. Design assessments that are checkpoints for understanding.
3. Teach students how to use the assessment tool. Don’t let format interfere with demonstration of knowledge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7 (USA VS. Japan Tomorrow :), a rematch from 4 years ago).

I think allowing our students to work amongst groups in conversation can allow you to find and search for students who need help. Two of my favorite classes in collage where both classes we had a ton of group discussion about how to solve a particular problem. We were simply given the problem and more or less we knew what we needed to do. Get to work on solving it. If you think about our history we don’t know exactly what happened, we only know accounts of it and historians are really in a sense telling a story. That is all history really is, it’s a story usually written by the winning side. Not everything though, what about science. Is science exact? Mathematicians use other ideas and thoughts to build upon their own.  In fact in science everything is really just a theory that has been agreed upon amongst the scientific community they have agreed it to be true. Does this mean we should stop researching it or studying something?

I read an article called “Why do Americans stink at math?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=0). One of the real differences in an American classroom and one from Japan was how students were instructed. In America we gave a lecture on problems and assigned a bunch of problems for the students to do. In Japan the students were given a problem and tried to solve the problems first, in a sense struggle. I found struggling myself helped me not only want to learn but be really creative in my thinking. In my experience sometimes we were way off and sometimes we were surprised how close were where to solving it.

The author of my book Tovani writes about working in small groups and why. She compiles this list.

1.       Discussion..

2.       Stimulates higher levels of thinking develops social skills, develops listening skills, encourages articulation of thinking, honors all learners, holds kids accountable helps students remember, allows students to make connections, allows other to see different perspectives and promotes deeper understanding.

But how do you control every group? I can see how simply saying ok class get into groups and chaos. How do you know if every table was on task? Even in collage we would be off topics at times. It’s important to give the class some rules first.

Chapter seven was truly on working in goups and how it helps grow understanding.

What works:

1.       Show kids how to discuss. Use real-world examples.

2.       Give students specific feedback.

3.       Use powerful pieces: No one wants to discuss something dull.

4.       Anticipate stumbling blocks. Think about adult groups. What do you do when one person talks all the time. How can a group be brought back on track? How can new thinking be generated.