Blog Post 8~ Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

Blog Post 8~ Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

I enjoyed Cris Tovani’s book and how she address the fact many students actually fake read, or rather, they do whatever it takes to not read texts that they are assigned because they don’t understand what they read when they actually read it. In her classes, she tells her students “We are going to study what good readers do…. We’re going to learn to use thinking strategies.” Then she sets about doing just that.

She states there are two types of struggling readers encountered in secondary schools ~the resistive readers and word callers: “Resistive readers can read but choose not to; Word callers can decode the words but don’t understand stand or remember what they’ve read.”

Reading goes beyond thinking and constructing meaning, and it’s more than word pronunciation. Researchers define it as a complex, recursive thinking process. By utilizing years of research on proficient readers’ characteristics, they isolated seven strategies used by successful readers of all ages:

• They use existing knowledge to make sense of new information.

• They ask questions about the text before, during, and after reading.

• They draw inferences from the text.

• They monitor their comprehension.

• They use “fix-up” strategies when meaning breaks down.

• They determine what is important.

• They synthesize information to create new thinking.

Tovani states that “Twenty-five years ago Rumelhart (1976) identified six cueing systems that readers use to understand text.” She discusses those cueing systems; the first three are surface structures, typically emphasized during primary grades providing readers visual/auditory clues for pronouncing/recognizing words and sentence structure comprehension: Graphophonic cues relating to letters, letter combinations, and associated sounds. Lexical cues relate to words, including instantaneous recognition, but not always their associated meaning. Syntactic cues relate to form/structure of words/sentences making up pieces of texts, including if they have cohesive organization and or “sound right.”

The last three-cueing systems are deep structures, allowing readers to interpret/analyze/draw textual inferences. They are rarely openly taught at middle/secondary level, even if they’re the means by which we comprehend difficult text. Semantic cues relate meaning(s), concepts, and or associations of words/longer pieces of text, including understanding subtle definitions/nuances. Schematic cues relate readers’ prior knowledge/personal

Experiences, allow readers to understand/remember their readings. (Cues group/organize New information into memory.) Pragmatic cues relate what readers consider important/what he or she needs in understanding a particular purpose while including social constructions of meaning, where reading groups arrive at shared meaning/abstract interpretations.

I felt these points were important to understand because they had to do with how students developed/acquired knowledge and process it. We as teachers cannot help our student “fix” a process if we cannot understand it in the first place.

Tovani states that a reader’s purpose affects everything concerning reading; purpose controls/drives what is considered important inside texts, what readers remember, and what comprehension strategy reader’s use in enhancing meaning. If students read difficult texts without a purpose, expect them to express complaints.

Tovani has six signals that indicate confusion when reading. Our job as teachers is to help students recognize these six signals and point out how to know when they are confused. She recommends posting these six indicators somewhere inside your classroom for student viewing:

• The inner voice inside the reader’s head stops its conversation with the text, and the reader only hears his voice pronouncing the words.

• The camera inside the reader’s head shuts off, and the reader can no longer visualize what is happening as she reads.

• The reader’s mind begins to wander, and he catches himself thinking about something far removed from the text.

• The reader cannot remember or retell what she has read.

• The reader is not getting his clarifying questions answered.

• Characters are reappearing in the text and the reader doesn’t recall who they are.

TEACHER’S POINT: Good readers know if these behaviors occur, it is time to stop and make a plan to repair meaning:

Another tip Tovani uses is giving student’s opportunities to isolate confusion, then they can begin repairing the meaning’s breakdown. She recommends teaching them to utilize sticky notes, by putting them next to passages causing confusion; this way, they can return later to try clarifying it.

I enjoyed Tovani’s explanation for students that readers hear voices as they read. She recommends sharing voices you hear as you read and pointing out that sometimes voices in your head may only recite words. The importance comes from acknowledging this happens to you too. You should tell students that you turn the reciting voice into a conversing voice. Explaining how sometimes the voice distracts you from textual meaning. Show students how to bring yourself back into texts.

I love these strategies, and I think they speak for themselves.

Strategies to “Fix Up” Confusion

• Make a prediction.

• Make a connection between the text and:

• Your life.

• Your knowledge of the world.

• Another text.

• Stop and think about what you have already read.

• Ask yourself a question and try to answer it.

• Reflect in writing on what you have read.

• Visualize.

• Use print conventions.

• Retell what you’ve read.

• Reread.

• Notice patterns in text structure.

• Adjust your reading rate: slow down or speed up.

While I cannot write on everything Cris Tovani has to offer in her book (as that would require re-writing it), I have provided you with my favorites, and the things that I remembered from reading it a few weeks ago. These are the things that stuck me the most after all that time. I also see myself incorporating them in a future classroom at some point, which is the true hallmark of a great resource~ actually seeing yourself using it.

Citation: Cris Tovani. I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers. Kindle Edition.