I Read It, But I Don’t Get It – Chris Tovani

This book is meant for teachers as a tool for teaching adolescents how read and comprehend what they are reading. Even though it is meant for teachers, I found myself reading the book as a student as well. This book was the first book that I read at the start of this quarter and I did that for a reason…the title. I thought about how I have read a lot of things that I did not get and could not fully comprehend. I thought that this book could be really useful in setting me up with better reading strategies for the rest of the quarter’s readings. I was right. I was never a bad reader by any means, but since I read Tovani’s work, I have completed several other books and have felt a noticeable improvement in my comprehension and understanding of the books I read. There are so many great strategies in Tovani’s work that can be used to teach and to learn how to read more effectively. As you can probably tell already, reading about the comprehension strategies in this book really made me contemplate my own reading skills and how there have been times throughout school when I have been lacking in that area. I don’t remember a time in high school when my teachers would focus on teaching good reading strategies to me. I would just be assigned the reading and not understand why I was reading it or the benefits that could come from good reading strategies. I lacked purpose for reading throughout most of high school and that is one of the first things that Tovani covers in her book. Having a purpose for reading is extremely helpful for gaining understanding from the text. That is only the first reading strategy that Tovani talks about, but the book is organized in a way that makes it easy to refer back to any of the strategies. This is one of those books that I see myself holding on to and using throughout my teaching career.