Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading? Content comprehension, grades 6-12. Stenhouse Publishers.
Reviewed by Emma Amick
Who am I and what do I want to understand better as a teacher?
Hi! My name is Emma Amick, and I am a pre-service teacher studying Secondary Education with a concentration in English at Oklahoma State University. I am always looking for ways to grow as a learner and educator and having an assortment of resources under your belt is necessary to plan lessons well! In order to develop my knowledge and skills as a teacher, I am looking to understand what it looks like to teach reading comprehension in the general classroom along with how to differentiate lessons for struggling readers.
Who are the authors and from what beliefs about teaching and learning do they come?
Cris Tovani is the author of Do I Really Have to Teach Reading: Content Comprehension, Grades 6-12, and the implicit ideas from the text convey that she believes teachers should be able to structure their curriculum for their students. She talks about learning from previous mistakes in order to find what works best and leaves her pride aside so that students are given the best education possible. Tovani explicitly addresses that teaching takes a village – when educators feel supported to try new curriculum, are pushed by challenging students, and know that they are assisted in their needs it gives them the opportunity to promote a safe learning environment in which students can try new
learning and reading strategies without fear of failure.
What questions or problems in teaching and learning does this book work to answer, uncover, surface, trouble?
The main question that Tovani is searching to answer is, “Do I really have to teach reading?” and if so, “How can I add that into my overloaded curriculum?” She not only believes that reading comprehension should be taught in the ELA curriculum but that it needs to be taught in all content areas. Throughout the text Tovani strives to uncover how teachers “can expand on their content expertise to provide instruction students need to understand specific technical and narrative texts” (Tovani, 2004, pg. back cover).
What is their answer and how do they answer it (e.g., theory, strategies, examples, resources)?
Tovani believes that yes, teachers need to teach reading in their content specific classrooms (i.e. science, history, psychology) but not necessarily in the way an English teacher would in their classroom. In order for students to learn about content, especially from textbooks, they need to be able to understand the words on the page and why the author is using them. Tovani offers a few note taking strategies that can be easily implemented into any classroom. One of these strategies is called the “so what” of reading comprehension. This strategy is a spin on a simple double entry journal that asks students to write about the connection they have to a passage on the left side and the “so what” on the right. This gives teachers the ability to scaffold learning while letting students make connections on their own. Tovani includes various strategies, resources, and examples such as these in her book while explaining the purpose of comprehension instruction beside each of them.
What are one or two quotes, passages, strategies that are especially worth sharing with
teachers and why?
Tovani includes a few essential elements of comprehension instruction into her book that I believe are worth teacher’s attention. She explains that we should “assess the text students are expected to read, provide explicit modeling of [our] thinking processes, define a purpose and [give clear reason], along with teaching students how to hold and use their thinking” (Tovani, 2004, pg. 17). Her text dives deeper into what this actually looks like in practice, but this general overview gives teachers a glimpse into how they should be conducting a classroom and learning environment.