Reading Response 3- Tovani Text Chapter 3&4

This week's reading assignment from Tovani's text includes a couple more details on modeling reading and comprehension, such as slowing down while reading, asking questions about the reading aloud, and jumping to various places in the text. The main point of chapter three expresses the multiple literacies different content areas have (such as reading blueprints, reading schematics, reading equations, and even reading page layouts to understand what the publisher considered important enough to notice in a text). Chapter four discusses the necessity of alternative texts for students to read aside from the textbook or aside from readings that may prove too difficult or too simple for a particular student.

I'm amazed at how quickly I can read through these chapters and how disappointed I become when the chapter ends. I think the things that impacted me the most from this week's reading include the expert blind spot so many teachers have about their own content area literacies in chapter three and the texts sets idea in chapter four.

The expert blind spot was especially noticeable when Tovani was teaching in a math class, and a couple students admitted that they considered the textbook graphic, which appeared whenever a new math property was introduced, to be the necessary mathematical equation to solve their math homework. The math teacher naturally ignored it as a graphic, and he assumed all of his students--and Tovani--would do the same thing. This example made me wonder what blind spots I may have when I teach English; ironically, I can't yet name anything I would consider a blind spot.

The text set idea had me asking questions about what exactly Tovani was talking about. Luckily for me, as soon as I developed a myriad of questions, the text gave examples of text sets while continuing to explain their characteristics. I think this idea is fairly obvious for an English classroom, but at least now I know what other texts I can include in my text sets aside from novels.

Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?: Content comprehension, grades 6-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.