Blog Watch: Students enthusiastic about activities from Cris Tovani's books
March 2008
Sometimes all it takes is a single strategy to get students started on the road to reading comprehension or meaningful writing. In this week's Blog Watch, two bloggers write about using activities Cris Tovani describes in her books I Read It, but I Don't Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?
Mrs. Williams, an adult educator in Los Angeles, writes about using Cris's text-marking strategy and receiving enthusiastic feedback from her students: "MY STUDENTS LOVED IT. They loooooooooooved it. My teenagers, in particular, looked up at me in astonishment after we did it for the first time. 'It makes reading so much easier, Miss,' one of them exclaimed. 'I actually remember what happened.'"
Read about how she modified the strategy to work with her own students here.
Ryan, an education graduate student at West Virginia University found Cris's "conversation calendar" useful as a tool to get to know his students during the first few weeks of school. In the conversation calendar, students write something -- anything -- every day of the week and then grade themselves on the quality of their entry. As the teacher comments on the student's writing, a conversation develops between student and teacher.
Read Ryan's full blog entry here.
Read more about Cris Tovani.
