Customer Reviews

I Read It, but I Don't Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Cris Tovani's book is fabulous! As a reading teacher, it helped me to find ways to help my students understand what they were reading AND to help them understand when they were understanding. It is obvious that the author knows her readers well and is able to help them to read for real purposes and to give them strategies for monitoring their own comprehension. I have read Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goodvis as well as Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman. I Read It But I Don't Get It adds to the things I learned about comprehension from these books. Although this book is written about middle school and high school students, I have used many of the ideas in the book with my upper elementary grade students. So many of the issues are the same. Many of my elementary colleagues are also finding this book helpful and have added it to their professional libraries. It also has great insights for content teachers--thoughts for helping students comprehend content reading. I highly recommend it for all teachers.

I teach seventh grade English in a district that expects 12-year-olds to read classics--and some really can, but others are stuck at a third or fourth grade reading level. I Read It, But I Don't Get It has some very practical suggestions that I can incorporate easily into my class to enrich the learning for all levels of readers. As I read this book, I became aware of the strategies I use to read difficult texts. Now I can pass those strategies on to my students. Few secondary teachers have the training to teach, or the time to gain the knowledge provided in this little text. Thanks to Cris Tovani, we now have a fine new resouce.

As a high school English teacher I am always looking for ways to make the invisible process of reading more accessible to my students. Tovani's book is wonderful! She not only provides sound advice for all teachers, but also models good teaching throughout her book. Usually, I am disappointed with educational authors as they offer impractical strategies that would never work with real students in a typical classroom. Tovani's book made me happy that I signed up to teach summer school and I am jazzed to try out her practical suggestions with students. Bravo!

As a high school special education teacher, this books speaks volumes to me!!! It is a revelation to see that special education teachers aren't the only ones facing the problems of kids who "read it, but don't get it." This book was recommended to me by a Title I Reading Specialist and I will be forever grateful. As a special ed teacher, I had received a lot of training in decoding instruction but not much in the way of teaching comprehension. As Cris Tovani said in her book, it is often erroneously expected that if they can at least read the words they'll understand them. I have found that this error perpetuates, and was at a loss for how to teach my downtrodden teenagers to understand. This book has given me so many useful strategies and after changing the way I read just one story, I have seen a difference in the level of comprehension and participation in my class of students with learning disabilities. I'm glad that Cris Tovani doesn't offer any ready-made lessons or materials in this book. If she had, I may not have read the rest of the book and would have missed out on the wisdom contained in its pages. I have recommended this book to several of my colleagues and am hoping that this trend catches on. By all means, if you need help learning to teach kids how to learn from text this is the book for you! Excellent companions to this book are "Nonfiction Matters" by Stephanie Harvey and "Strategies That Work" by Stephanie Harvey and Ann Goudvis (this book gives much of the same information that is in "I Read It, But I Don't Get It" but has an immense book list at the back of the book.

Tovani's approach to teaching reading to the most reluctant of learners is rather insightful. She does an excellent job of pointing out the assumptions that above-average readers make while reading that are not necessarily a part of the reluctant reader's experience. The only criticism I have of the book is that I had hoped to find ready to use material for the classroom. Instead, I found that while reading, it forced me to re-evaluate my own instructional approach. Ultimately, this is probably a far better thing than any quick fix approach. If you teach inner city kids or kids who come from homes where reading is not the norm, I believe you will find this book most helpful to your overall approach to managing the language arts classroom.

In this book, Chris Tovani invites you into one of her high school reading workshop classes. This reading workshop class is filled with students who are fluent readers, but who are also unable to comprehend what they read. Also, they have not elected to take the course, resulting in a room full of bored expressions and bad attitudes. The book begins at day one, and as you begin to read, you start to really feel sorry for Tovani, wondering how she is ever going to reach these reluctant students and turn them into better readers. But as she takes you through the class, and you read about each of her strategies, she makes it seem almost effortless. Tovani is able to connect with her students, and it is clear that they quickly gain her respect. You also learn that she herself was a "fake reader" until her 30s! I believe that this is a major reason why she is able to teach her students so successfully; she knows exactly what they are going through, and as a result, she is able to show them what really works. Tovani, a nationally-known reading consultant, continues to teach English and reading at the high school level because of this dedication to helping students.

Comprehending what we read really is something that most of us take for granted, and it's a skill that is very difficult to teach. Oftentimes, students who struggle with comprehension will simply read the words on a page and expect the meaning to arrive automatically. Tovani also acknowledges that some students want to make their teachers responsible for their thinking. When they are confused, they think that it is the teacher's job to fix it. Tovani tells us that many times, students don't realize that they actually have the tools to change their reading habits themselves. The trick is to make them think about their reading, and in this book, she provides a variety of ways to do so.

This book is divided up into three major sections. In the first part of the book, Tovani talks about "fake" readers, and she discusses some of the strategies they use to fool their teachers and pass their classes. This was eye-opening, to say the least! Tovani herself admits that for book reports, she used to select a very obscure book in the library, copy down what was in the inside flap of the cover, and then hide the book elsewhere in the library so her teacher would never find it! In the second part of the book (essentially the meat of the book), Tovani introduces various reading comprehension strategies, and she lets you take a look at how they work on real students in her reading workshop class. Some of these strategies include: setting a purpose for reading, knowing when you're stuck (and what to do when you are), making connections with unfamiliar subject matter, asking questions of the text, and making inferences. As you read the book, you get a glimpse of how students at first struggle with each of Tovani's lessons, then find success. The last section of the book contains actual tools (worksheets, diaries, etc.) you can provide to your students to aid them in their reading assignments.

I would highly recommend this book to any middle or high school teacher in any subject area. It appears that too many of our students are struggling with comprehension, and it is imperative that we do all we can to make them better readers. Unfortunately, most teachers do not have the extra time it takes to teach students how to read well, and a vast amount of material must be covered in middle and high school. Yet, reading is a lifelong activity, and we must give students the tools they need to become better readers, and we need to make them responsible for their own learning. This book shows you how. It was a very quick and easy read, and even if you walk away with one new idea for your classroom, it will be well worth it--for your students and for yourselves.

Chris Tovanni has created a valuable resource for all teachers by providing them with ideas for how to improve reading comprehension in high school students.

The one component that kept me from giving this five stars is that it is geared to English/Reading teachers. What would be a great addition in a second edition would be the inclusion of short example strategies for focusing on a textbook as opposed to literature. Granted any teacher who plans adequately at the minimum would have no problem adapting the strategies to textbooks, but some textbook direct strategies would be nice.

All in all however, this is a resource that as a social studies teacher I reference on a frequent basis. It helps me to develop realistic strategies to implement in the classroom to improve student comprehension.

We can finally stop giving up on high school students who just "don't get it." We don't have to surrender to the impulse to say "they will never be readers." In this book, Chris Tovani offers concrete strategies to guide struggling adolescent readers through a process that has become inaccessible to them.

It is energizing and exciting to have these tools to take to a classroom or a home with a frustrated teenager who does not believe in his or her ability to ever read well. It is the second chance that most high school students who are not excellent readers never believe can be theirs.

Now that "I Get It," I can't wait to take it to the classroom and help some young people learn why it is that people who truly read, love to read.

Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It can be a helpful resource for both present and future teachers. Tovani provides examples for the reader and her class, of her experiences with "fake reading" strategies. As a past "fake reader" myself, I was immediately intrigued by her solutions to the issue.

Tovani doesn't just identify the problem of "fake readers"; she actually gives helpful advice on how to become a better reader using practical solutions and strategies on reading. She mentions questioning the text, making predictions, text-to-text connections and the use of background knowledge as helpful tools for students. She also gives advice, like having the students' use sticky notes for areas where they get confused.

In addition to reading strategies, Tovani actually provides examples and materials, including the templates she uses for teachers to use in their classrooms.

Overall I think this book can be a phenomenal resource for present and future teachers to help their students with reading comprehension. I would recommend this book for anyone concerned with helping students become better readers.

Try this book: easily readable, conversational, and inspirational, it develops ways to reach those who do not really understand what they read. There are anecdotal narratives, each with suggestions for techniques to use in the classroom, and these help focus on the problem as well as possible solutions. I would like to see it used in teacher training classes.