Chris Tovani wrote an excellent book that exhibits comprehension strategies for adolescent readers. This book will be very useful for me to keep in mind when I am teaching. There are so many students who struggle with reading, or who simply just don't like to read. The majority of the students that struggle with reading are either "resistive readers" or "word callers". Tovani provided me with tons of ideas on how to work with and help these students. In high school, I would consider myself a resistive reader AND a word caller. I knew how to read, but I didn't like to at all and I also couldn't remember what I read half of the time. After reading some of Tovani's ideas, I know that a lot of these strategies would have helped me a lot in high school so I want to supply these strategies with my future students in order to help them.
One of my favorite strategies that Tovani provided is to make a connection with what you are reading. This allows students to connect what they have read with their own personal experiences and it can help them to remember and understand better what they have just read. We have tried this a few times in my practicum classroom and it seems to work really well for the students. This is something I will continue to try in my own classroom. I think having the students write a journal response to connect their life to the reading would be a really beneficial way of doing this!
Another strategy that I really enjoyed from Tovani's book is the double-entry diaries. This is a great tool for students to show us what they are thinking. This allows students to quote specific parts of the text and then explain their thinking behind each specific quote. By doing this, students are able to think about the text in their own ways. I think this could be really helpful for the students, and for us as teachers to see where their thinking is at!
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