Katelyn's Last Thoughts

     In my last post for the book "Do I Really Have to Teach Reading" by Chris Tovani, I want to address a few of the framing questions for this class relevant to my book as well as how I plan on using this information in my own teaching and classroom.
     First, I want to address a few framing questions as I see them answered by my book.

• Literacy is much more than just reading and writing words. 
• People become literate with practice and effective teaching strategies and techniques.  One technique to teach reading will not help everyone. 
• Promotion of literacy development comes with connecting to the text, having a library of different techniques and strategies to practice, taking time to sit and read espcially if you are a struggling reader, background knowledge about a subject, developing questions to stimulate connection to the text, and knowing how to mark the text to hold thinking.  These are just a few techniques my book shares for promoting literacy development.
• In Tovani's book, there is a huge difference between learning to read and reading to learn.  Learning to read requires very primary details such as knowing what letter you are looking at, knowing the sound that that letter makes, and being able to put it with a bunch of other letters to create a word.  This includes reading words, sentences, paragraphs, and books.  However, just reading will not bring you comprehension and this is where you have to read to learn.  This is where teaching of reading strategies and techniques come in for both struggling and experienced readers.  Both are very important because without first learning to read you cannot read to learn. 
• We need to teach our students how to read within our content fields to better learn the information.  If we expect our students to understand all they read in different content fields, we are not helping them reach their full potential in our content classes. 

     Lastly, I feel as though I could use all techniques, strategies, and worksheets that Tovani discussed in this book.  I love all of the bulleted points that Tovani includes at the end of each chapter and what works for students and teachers alike.  I will take all of this information I have learned to heart and try to incorporate as much of it into my own classroom as I can, using her work as an example for myself.  I enjoyed reading this book and I am happy for the opportunity to do this blog.
     Thank you all for commenting and reading my blog.  I have learned so much from each of your posts!