I Read It, but I Don’t Get It

            I love this book!  Cris Tovani reinforced what I have been hearing in my education classes and what I see in the Common Core State Standards, EVERY teacher is responsible for teaching their students how to read!  I Read It, but I Don’t Get It, offers practical strategies to help teachers help their struggling readers.  Tovani identifies two types of struggling readers as “resistive readers who can read, but choose not to and word callers who can decode words, but choose not to” (14). The first thing that we all need to realize is that reading is more than decoding, “reading is thinking” (18).  Good readers utilize many different strategies to help them understand and comprehend what they are reading, like using existing knowledge and determining what is important (17).  I think the most important and practical advice in this book, is that I need to be a passionate reader of what I teach.  I love historical non-fiction and my passion and for the genre can help motivate my students to read it and love it as well.  The other important piece of advice is to model for my students how good readers read.  I need to teach my students to read with purpose to help their comprehension, think aloud to make sense of the text and it helps them see/hear the mental process and mark the text to help them become engaged with the text.  I also need to make my students responsible for monitoring their understanding and to take ownership of the situation when they don’t.  This means that student can’t give up reading a text when they struggle understanding it.  Tovani offers several useful strategies when readers get stuck, like reread, reflect, and visualize.  I think these strategies need to be practiced often so they become second nature to students (51).  I also know it is important to help students make connections between disciplines and I like Tovani’s suggestion to use Venn diagrams or to have students make a list of what they know about topics in an entry task (66).  My last take away from this book is that good readers ask questions.  Curiosity helps students make connections between the text the world around which strengthens and deepens comprehension.  I know this book will be a valuable tool for me to help my future Social Studies students improve their reading skills!