As previously mentioned I am in the Health Education program at UNM. I have not began to student teach but have done much observations in APS health classrooms. I must say that when signing up to take this course I thought how could this possibly help me to teach Health. I kept thinking back to all of my observations and trying to picture where and how what I would be learning would be beneficial in a Health classroom. After reading many of the assigned readings along with the start of the text "Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?" I am slowly but surely starting to see how the concepts in this class can be applied to the subjects I want to teach in the future.
In "Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?" a high school english teacher Cris Tovani, who is also a member of the PEBC in Colorado, takes many basic psychological and educational ideas, concepts, and theories and puts them to use in a very cohesive, strategic and organized way so that they can be used in any classroom to teach children how to read comprehensively. The Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC) is a group based out of Denver, CO that consists of teachers of literacy and self development. When Cris joined this group it was lead by Ellin Keene and Suzan Zimmerman co authors of Mosaic Thought. I found this very interesting because when reading Tovani's text I found some of her statements of specific ideas and concepts to remind me of the Mosaic of Thought excerpt in which I read last week. Aside from teaching high school English and Reading, Tovani has traveled to several schools as a consultant on teaching reading and content comprehension.
I found this text enjoyable to read because of the authors practicality and honesty. Cris Tovani states in her text "There is nothing unique or revolutionary I use simple principles of good teaching to design comprehension, lessons, activities, and materials." I also appreciate that Cris illustrates a motivation to convince all students and teachers of all contents that reading and teaching reading comprehension is important. When Cris shared a story of her persuasion to an Industrial Tech teacher as to why and how learning to teach reading could be beneficial specifically in his classroom I sensed how motivated she is to teach.
In chapters 1-4 Tovani gives several strategies, exercises and concepts for reading comprehensively and strategically. Two strategies presented that stuck with me most were what Tovani calls "thinking strategies used by proficient writers" and "fix-up" strategies. Thinking strategies involve using and applying background knowledge, imaging, questioning, deciding what is important, breaking down thoughts and expanding thoughts. Fix-Up strategies are intended to be used when reading becomes complex or confusing. Fix-Up strategies involve: making predictions, connections, questions and reflections while answering the questions and using what you have already read. Slowing down can also be a Fix-Up strategy.
Cris Tovani also makes a very good point in the second chapter of this book. She stresses the truth about the expectations of teachers. She points out that teachers are expected to cover a very extensive amount of material in a short period of time. Because of this many teachers in turn will often ask for or expect an impractical amount of effort and work from students. Tovani analogously compares it to wanting to loose thirty pounds while eating cake all the time. She states "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I found this humorous and very true.
