Cris Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It

When I read I Read It, but I Don't Get It I realized how fortunate I am to have always been a strong reader. This was something I used take for granted, but I can’t imagine how much harder school would have been without that skill. It also taught me how students attempt to deal with this problem and how as a teacher I can actually help them. This book helped me empathize with students who don’t like reading

I appreciated that this book was practical and no nonsense. It laid the issues of struggling readers and literacy in schools and gave practical ways of battling it. I enjoyed hearing the anecdotes straight from Tovani’s own classroom it shows that she really understands the issues firsthand not just studying them from data and numbers. They show real kids with universal problems seen in classroom. It was also helpful that it showed exactly how his theories are implemented and successfully produce reading improvement compared to other theories.

In Chapter 4 she introduced the notion of readers monitoring their reading. I think this an extremely astute and significant idea. It is important for students to understand their own thinking and to be able to recognize when and why they are confused. This will allow them to rely less on the teacher and more on themselves to solve the problem. The idea of training the voices students listen to, to alert the reader leads right into the next chapter Tovani provides us with multiple strategies they can employ to help the reader change what they are doing to make sense of the text.

I think I will definitely remember to look back over this text any time I come in contact with a struggling reader because Tovani provides ways to truly help a student set goals and reach them step by step.