"I read it but I dont get it" - Chris Tovani

I was always a "reading for fun" student as well as completing reading in the classroom throughout high school; however, when I became a college student I found myself skimming or not reading the assignments at all. I found the first five chapters of this book very interesting because of my own experience with reading as well as my interactions with students in my master classroom.

 

Although I am placed in a ninth grade language arts class I also get to spend two class periods with a reading support classroom. When I was reading the first few pages of the first chapter and the author was explaining the reactions of students on the first day, I was able to connect because I have seen those reactions first hand. When students find themselves in the reading support classroom they expect book reports, countless hours of reading, but do not expect to learn anything. The book explains that middle and high school teachers believe that students should have learned the importance and basics of reading and therefore expect students to know how to read, read large amounts of text in a short period of time and know how to gain information by reading. My master teacher knows this is not always the case and uses a series of approaches to help students improve their reading skills in a comfortable classroom that focuses on each of their reading challenges.

 

For both the reading support students as well as the basic ninth grade language arts students I have found that a beneficial approach to help students want to read and understand what they are reading is building schema and background. The book explains in Chapter 2: Realities of Reading that “students who don’t already know something about what they are reading can’t make connections”, in other words what they are reading seems unimportant. My master teacher has shown me the importance of the schema building for not only novels but short stories. The students are more intrigued to read when they can make connections from their own experiences to the literature. For my first observation lesson in the education program I am getting to build schema for my classroom to prepare for reading “The Lord of the Flies”. I am using a stimulation approach and grouping students for activities in order to understand the idea of group dynamic, and a leader lead group. This will help students reference the groups of boys that they are reading about to their own experiences with groups.