As a first year teacher, I was really overwhelmed by the amount of
content that I was expected to cover (especially since many of my students were
struggling readers, and since we didn’t have enough copies of texts for the
students to take home). In 45 minutes,
we had to get through the text and learn and practice a new skill. In the beginning of the year, I found myself
speeding through the content so we don’t fall behind but although we were up to
date with the content, I knew that the majority
of my students were feeling lost, and few were the ones who were even
comprehending the basic plot line of the texts we were reading.
When I started working with the special education teacher in
my school, he introduced me to the
fix-up strategies that Tovani discusses in chapter 1. He then explained
that it was really useful for the students to see us using these strategies
when we read, and he also explained that these strategies really help in
improving their reading skills.
When discussing fix-up reading strategies, Cris Tovani
writes “I would rather my students master a few core skills than be exposed to
so many strategies in a short period of time that they don’t master any of them”
(P5). My colleague and I felt the same
way, and so we decided to focus on visualizing, making inferences and
predictions, rereading, summarizing and making connections. Each day during the read aloud, we would stop
and say things like “ I am now visualizing …” to show students how we can
better understand passages that are rich in imagery , or “I now want to
summarize what I read to make sure that I better understand this passage”. When
we weren’t thinking aloud, we would ask them to visualize, summarize, etc.
Having used some of these strategies that Tovani recommends
we use to help improve our struggling readers’ reading skills, I would like to
say that the fix-up strategies we covered really helped strengthen our students’
reading comprehension skills. In addition, we also noticed that these students
felt more confident in their ability to read texts independently instead of as
a whole class. I definitely recommend using these strategies; it is time consuming,
but extremely helpful. However, keep in mind that it takes a very long time for
struggling readers to learn how to use these strategies when they read, so make
sure to start with two or three, and then move on from there.
Works Cited
Tovani, Cris. Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?: Content Comprehension, Grades 6-12. Portland: Stenhouse Publishers, 2004. Print.
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