In Conclusion...

Overall, I found Tovani’s “Do I Really Have to Teach Reading” to be hit or miss.  I found some good strategies that I will surely apply to my lesson plans; however, I felt there were far more misses for my content.  By that, as I stated in a previous blog, this book would be great for someone who teaches reading and writing, or even social studies and history.  As for science, I felt Tovani glossed over any useful strategies to help students engage with the text in science.

Some helpful learning strategies that I think will help from her book:

·         Students should ask questions more often instead of just answering them.

·         Using a double diary to help students remember equations and formulas, as well as help students conceptualize through illustrating things like atoms and cells.

·         Giving students direction with the text instead of just having them read everything.

·         Using pictures to help struggling students, as well as ESL students comprehend ideas.

·         Show kids how to discuss a topic, and make the students feel safe in doing so.

Through reading this book, I’ve discovered that perhaps why it is so hard for Tovani to go into great detail in regards to learning through reading strategies in science is because most of her strategies tend to revolve around fiction, storytelling, and personal connections. By that I mean Tovani mentions several times that to help engage students the teacher needs to make the students identify with the text.  For example, a story about a boy and his dog, it isn’t hard for most of the children to be engaged with stories about children and dogs.  However, in science it is “dull” and packed with cold hard facts.  I suppose a science teacher could use analogies to help compensate, and perhaps find fun stories about cells and gravity, but those lessons would be exceptions and unfortunately, unless a child just loves learning about math and science, most children will just have to suffer through the tedium of science.  

As for my experience with blogging in general?  I sort of enjoyed messing around with pictures and layouts.  If I would have had more time, I’m sure I could have made this blog pretty super-awesomeJ. However, I stick with my original assertion, and that is I don’t really have much to say, and I can hardly believe anyone would want to read it even if I did.  Of course, I do like the idea of maybe setting up some sort of blog for my students for homework assignments, interesting facts, etc.