Chapter 5 introduce two ideas for reading in the classroom: the first idea was for teachers; the second idea focused on students. For teachers, as we reread our content area information, we become experts in that information and become overwhelmed by the amount of material we should cover in our classes. To counteract this, Tovani suggested an instructional purposes worksheet which demands we decide what is essential for students to learn. For students, we need to help them distinguish purposes for reading and which internal voices they need to activate to encourage active reading.
Tovani comments on essential learning for overwhelmed teachers answered some general questions I had about my future teaching years. I feel I will be able to apply her worksheet to my curriculum so that I know what my students absolutely need to learn without overwhelming them or myself.
I connected with Tovani's explanation of internal reading voices; I have read about such a thing before, but my internal voice doesn't seem to be entirely vocal; instead I tend to see certain words (instead of hearing myself read) or experience emotions (such as confusion instead of internally asking questions). I do, however, think to myself with a conversational internal voice; once for my Exceptional Student class, we were assigned live a day of silence-- one day where we were not allowed to speak--but because my thoughts were so loud, I'd accidentally spoken to someone because I'd thought I'd been speaking to myself for so long.
Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?: Content
comprehension, grades 6-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
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