Chapter 9

Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?: Content comprehension, grades       6-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Summary: This chapter talked about the challenges that each teacher faces and how we will never have all of the answers. We continue to learn as we teach and you can never handle the similar situations the same because each child is different.

This chapter summed up the book and at the beginning I had put myself in the author’s shoes and I had the same questions as she did.  Which do you decide is more important and when do you decide what to ignore or when to discipline.  These are all tough questions that I will have to figure out for myself as I go and learn from my mistakes. Every situation is different and I will have to decide how to handle each one. I feel like I will accept late work, but it will be for partial credit so that it will encourage the students to still complete the assignments, rather than since they weren’t able to do it before the deal line, they might as well now do it at all because they would not receive any credit for it. I really liked the poem that Tovani mentioned in this chapter because I feel like it shows the students what teachers have to deal with and may encourage them to do their best and not slack off. “Did I miss anything?” is a very common question that every teacher gets and students have most likely asked. I know that I have asked this question. I love the sarcasm in this poem, because sometimes I feel that students do not think that class was important and that they probably did not miss anything. Another question asked is “Did I miss anything important?” This question makes me laugh because every class day should be important that if a student misses, they are missing out on a large portion of the lesson. I am going to make sure that every day my lessons are going to be important and that students feel that each day is important that they do not want to miss the class because they are afraid of missing information.