Tovani Chapters 1-5

Tovani Text: Chapters 1-5

            There are a great deal of things that really stand out in the text, which probably explains Cris Tovani’s prominence in the educational circuit, but a few things especially caught my eye either because I have used a similar method that didn’t work as well, or it is something that I believe is important to incorporate into my classroom.

            The biggest standout to me was the Marking Text section. Marking text is a strategy that I feel is completely underused in public education (I believe because of the textbooks being school property dilemma), and when it is used, I think it is used as a cheap way out of helping kids to understand. In my experience, sometimes students are told to highlight certain portions of the text or highlight some subjective portion of the text (such as: what stands out to you?). The bottom line, as Tovani explains is that simply having students highlight things doesn’t help them to understand, instead, they need to be given a purpose to highlight. Tovani suggests using color codes to highlight different pieces of information. The biggest thing that I appreciated from this section though was to have students highlight information that they don’t understand and have them work to clear it up in their own words in the margins. This will help students learning while simultaneously teaching critical reading skills.

            Furthermore, Tovani advocates for marking text with certain visual codes that are designed to stimulate certain type of thought in the students. The one she uses as an example is background knowledge, so whenever students see “BK” in a highlighted portion of text, they have to bring in a personal experience to help explain the text or demonstrate their understanding of the text. For example, you might hand out a photocopied article for reading with a highlighted section with the letters “BK” next to it, and in response students should start with “This reminds me of…” or “In the past I have seen/heard/read about something similar…” In addition to actively pursuing critical reading skills, it also creates a sense of relevance. Relevance is one of the biggest thing an educator can bring to the table, because unless there is a reason for information to mean something to the students then they simply wont feel the need to learn it.