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Title: When Kids Can't Read What Teachers Can Do

Author: Kylene Beers

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I am currently teaching two different subjects at a middle school in Miami, Florida. I teach Film & Literacy, and Speech & Debate to 6,7, 8th grade students. This is my second year teaching. I hope to one day be an ELA teacher with a vast amount of knowledge on resources and techniques to help my students succeed.

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Greetings! Currently, I am teaching art to grades K-8 at a Title I school in Pasco County in a working class neighborhood. Our school focuses on advanced curriculum so I am teaching art history with the art classes so students learn about social studies, culture, and history. We are able to teach about the different cultures of the students in our school as well: Greek, African, Persian, Mexican, Spanish, and Asian cultures are represented. I also tutor fifth grade and seventh grade. The fifth grade students have really blossomed this year and no longer groan during writing time! I look forward to seeing them do well.

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I currently teach Reading at a middle school in Pensacola, Florida.  I am in my 15th year of teaching 8th grade Reading, all at the same school.   In addition to 8th grade Reading, I have taught 7th grade Reading for three nonconsecutive years. All my student scored Level 1 or Level 2 on the FSA ELA. This year, I am teaching 7th grade and 8th grade Reading.

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One of the unique concepts that she mentions in the book is displaying a list of words that a lot of students have difficulty spelling correctly. Being a middle school teacher, my word wall consists of words that we are currently studying. Whenever my students are completing written assignments and they have a misspelled word I usually circle it and write the word correctly. Sometimes students need to be able to visualize the word in order to practice spelling it correctly. Providing word walls to your students that include "spelling demons" can definitely help your students see those words everyday and overcome the struggle of spelling it incorrectly. Some words that she includes in her word list is "Wednesday" "separate," and "business." All common words that we see misspelled on the daily.

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Ch.11-Word Recognition: 'What's after "sound it out"'

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Ch.11-Word Recognition: 'What's after "sound it out"'

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When students are learning to read, they are encouraged to 'sound it out.' However, as students age out of elementary but still progress into middle school, this becomes ineffective and embarrassing for older students who do not grasp reading fluently. The author offers alternative ideas, namely teaching students to break words into chunks, to study prefixes, suffixes, and root words, and learning specific vocabulary for specific subjects. Other items are high-frequency word lists, learning rhyming words, and other word sorts to assist students.
In our group, we all agreed that this information was helpful. Also, we agreed on chunking, breaking words apart, and silent reading as important factors in word recognition.

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Ch. 12-Spelling: From Word Lists to How Words Work

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Ch. 12-Spelling: From Word Lists to How Words Work

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Students no longer have as much incentive to spell correctly and the focus on spelling should be on being able to comprehend the word more than anything. However, spelling improves word recognition, which helps improve reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. This chapter provides helpful tips to help students improve all of these items. From within word patterns to great word walls, the author outlines methods that work in a classroom.
All of us agreed with the word wall concepts, whether it is high-frequency words, commonly misspelled words, or grade level words, we agreed that is a helpful tool.

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These kids can’t read, so what am I supposed to do?

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These kids can’t read, so what am I supposed to do?

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First, as teachers, we have to understand the multiple aspects of reading: the cognitive, the social and emotional, and the text, need to be addressed when working with a struggling or dependent reader.  An independent reader is one who, even when struggling with the text, knows and uses strategies, such as identify the author’s purpose, make connections, and use context clues, to help get through the text.  A dependent or “struggling” reader cannot or does know what strategies to use or how to use them.

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Ch. 13-Creating the Confidence to Respond

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Ch. 13-Creating the Confidence to Respond

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Students may be very smart but lack the confidence to speak up in class. The teacher's challenge is to get all students engaged and active in the classroom, especially during reading discussions. One item is to be sure no one is being picked on or comments are not sharp and focused on a single student. Everyone should speak respectfully. Respect and acceptance of everyone are the keys to a good classroom environment.
All of us agreed that a diverse classroom that celebrates its differences is the main goal for a good environment. Students that feel welcomed are more likely to share sensitive information.

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There are many different books available to student but diversity of the classroom library is critical for student's success. Students will not be interested in books that are not interesting. Creating a classroom library with many different subjects will create good readers who are interested and engaged.
We all agreed on this type of library in the classroom. I personally like to include books with as many graphics, pictures, and drawings as can fit in the pages. I also like to include different types of fiction and non-fiction to suit every student's needs and likes. All of us agreed on this.

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Ch. 15-A Final Letter to George and Appendices

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Ch. 15-A Final Letter to George and Appendices

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The final chapter is a letter to George, the student that the author felt she failed as a teacher. We all have students like that, students who did not succeed as we had hoped or had issues we felt we did not address as well as we could. These experiences made the author become a better teacher and the final chapter is a dedication to that student. The author also includes appendices with helpful word lists. forms that can be copied for use in the classroom, books lists, and reference items from the text. These are all wonderful tools that we as teachers can use daily for instruction.

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What do I mean when I say "these kids can't read?"

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What do I mean when I say "these kids can't read?"

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To move dependent readers to independent reading, we have to know what aspect of reading the students need instruction in and we have to develop a plan of action.  To help focus the instruction, students and teachers need to know “what good readers do.” Good readers, predict, visualize, question, connect, infer, identify, evaluate, and monitor.

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Teaching these kids what good readers do

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Teaching these kids what good readers do

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Not only do students have to know what good readers do, but they also have to be taught the strategies through direct and explicit instruction.  To teach comprehension strategies explicitly and directly we have to model for our students through a think-aloud.

1. Decide what specific strategy you want to model and what text to use.

2. Tell your students exactly what strategy you’ll be practicing while reading the passage.

3. Read the passage to students while modeling the strategy.

4. Give your students several chances to practice the strategy with shorter texts, while you listen and coach them.

5. Continue to model the strategy as needed or with different genres throughout the year.

6. Give students opportunities to try the strategy without your coaching or support.

While explicitly and directly teaching the strategies may take time away from teaching content it is necessary for students to become better readers.

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In 1979, her first year teaching, Kylene Beers realized that some of her 7th grade language arts students could not decode and some students could not make sense of the text.  That is also the year she met George.  George could not read; he could not decode most multisyllabic words and many single-syllabic words gave him difficulty.  In October of that year, George’s parents requested a conference to discuss George’s reading difficulties and what Beers, as his teacher, was going to do to help him.  It was that conference and her inability to help George, that spurred Beers’s search for answers to the question: how can we help middle and high schoolers who cannot read?

Written as a handbook, filled with teacher-student interactions, strategies, reproducibles, checklists, and charts, When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 was not meant to be read cover to cover.  In chapters 2 and 3, Beers discusses what makes a struggling reader and assessing their needs.  Chapters 4-9 discuss comprehension; inferencing; pre-reading, during reading, and after-reading strategies; as well as vocabulary activities that can be used to meet the needs of students.   Strategies and activities are addressed in chapters 10-12 for students struggling with fluency, word recognition, and spelling.   Chapter 13 considers the social and emotional confidences of readers offering strategies on how to be an engaged participant in reading and discussions, and chapter 14 is all about finding the right book.

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Teaching these kids how to make inferences

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Teaching these kids how to make inferences

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Dependent readers do not understand that reading is an activity that requires interaction with the text to get meaning. Independent readers construct meaning from the information given by the author and information they bring to the text.  Dependent readers believe the text will provide everything and all they need to do is decode the text; if the meaning is not comprehended, dependent readers stop reading or ask someone to explain it.

There are several activities we can do with our students to help them make the connections between what the text says and what it means to them:  We can create a poster of the types of inferences for students, and you, to refer to throughout the day.  We can read-aloud and think-aloud making inferences and have the students identify the types of inferences being made.  We can perform Syntax Surgery - mark-up the text showing the relationship between the pronouns and nouns or how you added details.

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One of the most important things to incorporate in your classroom before starting any lesson is activating prior knowledge. The author provides many different examples of activities that you can use to accomplish this with your students. One of my favorites to use is anticipation guides. Using anticipation guides to help your students learn about the topic they will be learning about can help them have some background knowledge before diving into a new topic they never heard of. It is important to understand that there should not be a right or wrong answer. Instead you should want them exploring what they believe about a certain statement. If a student is choosing true or false, this may be an ineffective anticipation guide. Some other examples that the author provides is KWL charts, Probably Passages, and Tea Parties.

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In a reading classroom, discussions become natural in the classroom. It is important to keep your students being active readers. Independent readers should always hear an internal dialogue with the text or with themselves while reading. Conversations need to be meaningful before, during and after the reading. Students should be asked questions not only on characters, setting or plot development, but also on predictions, clarifications, and connections that they are able to make when reading. The author provides the reader with different ideas to use in the classroom. I loved the charts that she provides for stem starters for "saying something" comments. Saying something is an activity where students are given a chance to think about what they are reading. For example, your students can take turns reading a book, and every so often they pause to "say something" about what they are reading. Providing students with anchor charts that demonstrates the different statements they might bring up will help them better comprehend what they do during this time.

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There are many times where students finish reading a book, and wonder why the teacher chose the book to begin with. Extending the meaning of the book even after you read is crucial to a successful lesson. After reading activities can help to measure how the student has comprehended the text. One of my favorite activities to incorporate in the classroom, is one that we actually used in a previous course here. "Somebody Wanted But So," allows students to move beyond summary writing. The process of choosing who they are going to write about makes them ponder about different characters in the book, choosing the wanted allows them to think about important events that occurred, but corresponds with conflict and lastly, the so helps students think about the resolution of the story. Having the students present the ones they created will help students see how different peers pick different characters or events that they felt were important. Similar to this activity you can also use retellings, text reformulation, and reflection activities.

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Vocabulary is one of those tasks that we know we need to be teaching students, but can be a struggle to really know if they are learning it. Usually teachers give words to students on a Monday and by Friday they are already having a test on them. For a struggling reader, this can really harm them. As a beginning teacher this was a struggle for me at first because I was not sure what way was best to teach students. This book really did a great job of giving various examples and portraying how to use it in the classroom. It is important to know that students learn more when you give them fewer words to work with and allow for them to use the words in discussions in class. One of the unique activities provided in the book was vocabulary trees. If you are teaching root words, for example, "tract" the student will start with that definition at the root of the tree. As the student moves up to the branches and twigs of the tree they will learn new words that follow, like, "attract" or "contract." This activity will allow the kids to not only learn words with the same root word, but also be creative and see how all the words correspond to one another. Vocabulary can be a very tough part of learning for struggling students. It is important that you are asking the right questions and using effective graphic organizers to help students learn their vocabulary terms.

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With all of these skills combined before, during and after reading, it will lead to the success of students in fluency and automaticity. If a student is struggling with fluency there are different ways to improve it. A tactic that I make sure to use in the classroom is giving students the opportunity to hear different texts. In order for students to become fluent, they need to hear what a fluent reader sounds like. There are many group activities that can be done to help fluency. Providing moments of echo reading, or choral reading can help students work on a specific aspect of fluent reading. Non-fluent readers usually struggle because they are not given the opportunity to practice their reading. These readers need a lot of time to read at their instructional or independent level.