Teaching Readers How to Hold Their Thinking

    Now that Tovani has introduced the idea of "holding thinking" while reading she then introduces how to teach students to become aware of the concept and how to use it.  Tovani shares some activities she likes to use in her classroom.  A first day activity for her reading class involves having the class as a whole look at a picture in which they are not given any information on.  The class is then directed to discuss what they think of the picture.  In the experience Tovani shared in her book her students debated and discussed wether the picture is real or modified.  As the class wraps up their discussion Tovani points out that they are thinking about the picture she then encourages them the next day to do the same thing but with a short article.  Tovani asks the students to write questions, and thoughts on the margins of the article and turn it in.  The next day she then shares with the class what she found to be good examples of thinking while reading.
   This is a list of guidelines Tovani gives her students to help them mark their texts:
- Write the thinking next to the words on the page that cause you to have the thought
- If there isn't room on the text to write, draw a line showing the teacher where the thinking is written
- Don't copy the text: respond to it
- Merely underlining text is not enough.  Thinking about the text must accompany the underlining.
- There is no one way to respond to text.  Here are some possible options: Ask a question, make a connection to something familiar, give an opinion, draw a conclusion, make a statement.
Tovani states that by giving her student specific do's and don'ts she is more likely to her students illustrate thinking that correlates to reading well.
    I think when students can see their peers illustrating what that the teacher is expecting it helps to encourage students and can help them to see that what they are being asked to do is not out of reach.  I also believe that when students lead a thoughtful discussion while the teacher guides rather than does all of the talking, students will relate more to what is being said and also will be more likely to engage, listen and analyze.  I think often when a teacher is giving students information rather than leading them to the information students are more likely to struggle analyzing and relating the information.