Chapter 3- Parallel Experiences: Tapping the Mother Lode

     In this chapter, Tovani opens by telling a story about teaching content tachers, in a workshop, about teaching reading in their content classrooms.  One teacher she encounters in the workshop is an industrial tech teacher.  This is basically "shop" in high schools.  He wants to know why he has to participate because student's "do not read" in his class.  Tovani thinks about this and explains to the man that of course his students read, maybe he is so good at it that he doesn't realize it!  In his class, students read blueprints and directions on how to build birdhouses.  They do a lot of reading, it is just a different kind of reading.  Tovani stresses the importance of teaching reading in your content field; as content teachers, we need to teach students how to be better readers in our content field.
     One thing Tovani says in her book is, "I'm a pretty good reader of literature, but just because I can read and understand poetry doesn't mean I'm an expert math reader, (pg. 26)."  We have to make sure that we are teaching our children how to comprehend the information for our content area.  For example, I will be teaching health.  I cannot give the children an article from the Scientific American and expect them to understand and write a comprehension essay on the article.  They need to learn how to disect and pick out what they need and don't need.  They also need to be able to see the significance of the information to their lives and connect with the article in some way.  Another important step in teaching reading is to model.  Make sure that the child knows you struggle as well, but use different techniques to get through and understand the reading; then model the techniques for your students. 
     My favorite part of this chapter is when Tovani talks about the example of reading she gives to teachrs in her workshop to make them think about how they read.  She gives them an article called, "Di Tri Berrese, (pg. 126)."  This is not written in Italian or nonsense words, but when reading aloud, you can actually understand little bits of the reading.  This is a story about the three little bears, but twisted a little bit.  By reading this story, it teaches teachers that sounding out words is not enough to grasp the concept of the reading, but you must draw on what you already know about the story and reading and dig into your background knowledge.  Students need to be taught that you think while you read.  If you do not think while you read, you will not be connecting to the story or tapping into your background knowledge and therefore, you will not understand the reading.
     The last thing I wanted to mention that Tovani talks about is staying with the text.  She uses the example of the book Frankenstien.  The high school class that she was talking to about the book could not seem to get interested in it.  She connected with the students by telling them that she really couldn't get into the story either until... she found a technique that separates the book into three parts where the last part is the most exciting.  She then took an exciting paragraph from the book and gave it to the students to read.  They were suddenly interested in the book and began asking questions which made them want to read to find the answers.  By doing these small activities and gaining the students trust and interest, they will learn to be better readers and enjoy reading.

So... here is what works according to Tovani:

• Always IDENTIFY what your students are struggling with.
• MODEL reading a challenging piece of text for your students that will let you experience the difficulty they have as students.
• SHARE with your students ways to overcome their struggles in reading with ways you overcame the struggle.