Description

“Why do I have to read this?”

What teacher doesn’t dread this question? It usually comes from our most disengaged students a student who cries of boredom, or one who is angry or apathetic. When we don’t know what else to try, it’s easy to become frustrated and give up on these challenging learners. Author Cris Tovani has spent her career figuring out how to entice challenging students back into the process of learning.

In Why Do I Have to Read This?: Literacy Strategies to Engage our Most Reluctant Students Tovani shares her best secrets, lessons learned from big fails, and her most effective literacy and planning strategies that hook these hard to get learners. 

You will meet many of Tovani's students inside this book. As she describes some of her favorites, you may even recognize a few of your own. You will laugh at her stories and take comfort in her easily adaptable strategies that help students remove their masks of disengagement. She shows teachers how to plan by anticipating students’ needs. Her Curriculum You Anticipate structures of Topic, Task, Targets, Text, Tend to me, and Time will help you anticipate your curriculum. 

Inside Why Do I Have to Read This? readers will find:
 

• Literacy strategies for all content areas that support and engage a wide range of learners so they can read and write a variety of complex text 
• Reference charts packed with small bites of instructional shifts that coaches and teachers can use to quickly adjust instruction to re-engage students 
• Planning strategies that show teachers how to connect day-to-day instruction so that no day lives in isolation 
• Versatile think sheets that are reproducible and adaptable to different grade levels, content areas, and disciplines

Above all, Tovani gives teachers energy to get back into the classroom and face students who wear masks of disengagement. She reminds us of the importance of connecting students to compelling topics, rich text, useful targets, and worthy tasks. Teachers must tend to students’ basic needs and helps us consider how to best structure instructional time.

After reading this book, teachers will have new ways to connect with students in a deep, authentic way. Written in a humorous, compassionate, and wise voice, Why Do I Have to Read This? will provide answers to the pressing questions we have when we try to teach and reach all of our students.

About the Author

Cris Tovani taught first grade to seniors for 31 years. Her entire career has been spent trying to figure out the “knowing-doing” gap. Researchers tell teachers what they should be doing but actually doing it with 125+ students is a whole new ball game. Throughout her career, Cris has tried to take reading and writing research and apply it to all levels of learners. She loves sharing her success and failures with colleagues around the world so they too, can better serve students.

Cris most recently worked with secondary English language learners from a high poverty district in Colorado that was in its fourth year of turnaround. Currently, Cris is facilitating literacy labs in several different states to promote collaboration among colleagues. In addition, she has the pleasure of working with administrators to build their background knowledge on best practices so they are able to give teachers useful feedback about instruction.

Cris is a internationally known consultant focusing on issues of reading, content comprehension and assessment in secondary classrooms. She has been an adjunct professor and is the author of four books: I Read it but I Don’t Get It, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, So, What do They Really Know? And No More Telling as Teaching:  Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning.