Chapter 3
Parallel Experiences:  Tapping the Mother Lode

Tovani appeals to the teachers of content areas not conventionally thought of subjects that require reading.  Science, math, shop and other vocational classes, all actually utilize reading, but not in the same way that language arts, literature, and history or social studies might.  Her example of the shop teacher reading a blueprint illustrates the point well--there are ways of reading in every content field, and while the mechanism of reading varies, the teachers of that field are generally quite good at it.  So good, in fact, that they are baffled when students seem stuck.

Reading a blueprint for building a project in shop class or deciphering a word problem in Algebra is not something intuitive for students.  Likewise, reading a science article for content and outcome often occurs in a different sequence than reading a passage from a novel.  Teachers need to be aware of these differences according to their content area and model how they read for that particular subject in a way that students can observe and emulate.  Tovani calls it "mental modeling" and emphasizes several times that modeling how to read is often as important as the reading itself for many of the content areas outside literature and language arts.

For language arts and literature, there are strategies to be had as well, particularly if the text is dry, dense, or difficult.  Tovani uses the example of Frankenstein, a book she admits "fake-reading" in college because she just couldn't engage with it.  By handing out excerpts from one of the more exciting passages in the book to her students, Tovani manages to engage all of them in thinking about the text, asking questions, anticipating what might happen next or rereading to better grasp the context surrounding the events of the passage.  By "skipping to the good part," she managed to get them interested enough to stick with the text.  Not a bad technique!

I like that Tovani's methods are not exactly conventional.  When I had to read Frankenstein in high school, along with the various other classics that often started slowly and with excessive verbage (I still hate Charles Dickens), our teacher simply informed us we had to tough it out.  I developed a distaste for classics after a point, and I would find myself procrastinating about doing the reading until right before the test.  I was not the only one with this strategy.  When the whole class failed a quiz over A Tale of Two Cities, that should have been a clue to our teacher that she was not really on the right track with us!

Helping students engage with reading is one of the main ways to ensure that they become lifelong readers, not just in literature, but in whatever field they pursue after secondary school.  Overcoming the intimidation of tackling the "story problem" in math, or the detailed map in geography, or the blueprint in shop class, doesn't just equip students to succeed in those classes; it provides them with an actual life skill of organizing, engaging, and persevering with difficult texts and graphics.  That's every teacher's job.

"Ugh, seriously?  You want me to read this?!"