Responses


 * Chapter 1: A Defining Moment**

In the first Chapter of "When Kids Can't Read" we are able to be introducted to the author of the book, Kylene Beers, and to hear her story of how she began her teaching career. Beers got her undergaduate degree at The University of Texas in 1979 and from there hoped to be a 12th grade AP Literature teacher. Soon after college, she spent her time applying for teaching positions in Texas. Beers discovered that there were no openings for a high school english teacher, which lead her to the only job she could find, middle school.

Not knowing what she was getting herself into, middle was known for being the most challenging of grades to teach. With students being at an awkward age where learning is no longer cool and the work load gets larger and more difficult. Beers also came to see that although middle school consists of students from grades 6-8, many of her students either did not like to read or did not know how to read. This was an issue the Beers was not familiar with. If she had wanted to teach children to read, she would have taught elementry school.

At the end of the chapter, Beers begins to tell us the story of one of the first students that she had named George. George was a student in her class who came to school everyday however we often had his head down and was constatnly disengaged from learning. Georges parents decided that they wanted to have a meeting with Beers to see why he struggled with reading. Beers was scared of her first parent teacher confrence and did not have the anwsers that Georges parents were looking for. From George and his parents, Beers was able to learn that this is simply because there is not just one anwser to why students struggle because each student is differnt.

Reading the first chapter of the book "When Kids Can't Read" made me think right away about the students that I work with at The McKinley School in Boston over the summer. My students are also in middle school and they are struggling readers. Many of them are discourage from reading because they know that they are not good at it. Like George, they usually come to school but they are not involved with their learning. I am intersted to keep reading about Kylene Beers story in her career and to see how it relates to the students I work with.

At the beginning of the chapter two called "Creating Independent Readers", Beers tells us a story about how she spent the day at the carnival with her friends five year old daughter, Leah. At the carnival, Lean continued to ask Beers "What is that?" refering to the Brass Ring Toss game. After Leah had asked the same question four times with Beers responding each time with a similar anwser to the basics of the game, Leah began to get upset and started to rant off a list of ten questions that she had wanted anwsered about the game. For example, Bby Leah asking "What is that?" she actually wanted the anwser to the question "How do you win?
 * Chapter 2: Creating Independent Readers**

This got Beers thinking about all of her students in her class, but mostly about George. George would often respond to reading questions with "I don't get it". Beers began to prompt George with responding back to him by saying, "What don't you get?". Did he not understand who the characters were? Or the plot? By allowing George to have a conversation about the text, will lead to him figure out what about the text he did not comprehend. So hopefully the next time he will ask Mrs. Beers "Who are the characters?" instead of "I don't get it".

The other section in this chapter that got me thinking about teaching students to read and my students that I work with at the McKinley School in Boston was the section about struggling readers. This chapter explains the typical body language of a sturggling reader, such as the slouching, eye rolling, hood up, and ignoring the teacher. Yes a student with these characteristics COULD be a struggling reader, but what about the quiet girl who sits on the left side of the room? Could she be a struggling reader? Well, Beers explains that techniqually we all could be considered struggling readers when a text is too difficult for us. The difference is what that person does when the text gets tough.

My students at the Mckinley School often carry the symptons of a struggling reader. They slouch, talk back, roll their eyes, and much more when they are disengaged. After my experence of working at Mckinley, I have come to understand that these students act this way becasue they are struggling. Think about it, no one really likes to do something that is too hard or that they are bad at. They put up a guard on the exterior (their body language) to defend themselves when they don't know the anwser or have given up on trying. As a teacher, it is important to encourage students to keep their heads up and try when it comes to a subject that they struggle with because if they are at least trying and caring about improving, thats half the battle.

I enjoyed reading Chapter 3 called "Assessing Dependent Readers Needs" because this was the first time in the book where they author began to actually explain her thinking about working with student who struggle in reading. In the past two chapters, she mainly explained her past experiences and stories where here she begins to get technical.
 * Chapter 3 "Assessing Dependent Readers' Needs" (June 26, 2011)**

The beginning of the chapters explains behaviors of dependent readers. In the book there is a long checklish of typical behaviors that you may see from these kinds of readings. When I was reading the checklist I contantly was thinking about students that I have worked with in the past and how they definetly had some of these behaviors. She then connects the list of behviors to her student George and decides what he can do and what she can to to help George. By having an instruction plan for George, Beers will be able to show his progress to his parents at their next meeting, instead of her getting stuck when speaking to them like the last time.

The middle of the chapter tells three stories of students that Beers had worked with, Mike, Sharamee, and Amy. Mike was a high school student who often had trouble reading but more speciffically he struggled with his confidence and word recognition. WIth Mike, Beers tried to mainly focus on his decoding skills. The next stuednt, Sharamee, who really enjoyed reading aloud but refused to read silently to herself. Sharamee did not understand "reading to yourself" or "reading in your mind" and would find every excuse not to read on her own. Lastly we met Amy, who hates to read. Amy doesn't "understand the point in reading" and barely gives it a chance. This is because Amy has a difficult time with comprehension of text. When Amy reads, she is not obsorbing anything, which would make reading extremely boring to anyone.

The last section of the chapter is all about "what good readers do". When reading through this list, there were many behaviors that I wish I did when I read growing up. This list describes things such as comprehension, asking questions, unsing prior knowledge, and more. When I begin to work my student this summer at the McKinley School, I plan to make this list as a poster and hang it up in my classroom. This way, students can refer back to it when they find themselves fighting aginst reading. Perhaps I can have them work on one "good reader behavior" each week by doing before and after reading assessments, questioning, and discussions with them. Hopefully this idea will get them really thining about the text that they had just read and about reading as a whole.

At the beginning of Chapter 4, Beers lists strategies that dependent readers can use to become independent readers exepically dealing with comprehension. One mistake that teachers often make is that they assume that if they explain what something means to a student, then the student will just automatically grab hold of that information. Beers explains that just showing students this list of ways for them to become an independent reader is not enough. Students actually need to take control of their reading and practice these strategies constantly. By reinforcing these strategies (summarizing, questioning, visualizing, predicting, ect..), student will be able to understand the characteristics of a good reader and will evenutally become able to read independently.
 * Chapter 4: Explicit Instuction in Comprehension (June 27, 2011)**

Beers continues to explain the differnce between direct instruction and scripted instruction. Both terms are very similar but Beers tells us that scripted instruction provides teachers with a script or plan of what to say and when to say it while direct instruction stays away from a script or a planned program. Beers also shares with us her worries that if she is too busy teaching students reading strategies that she will not have enough time to each them actual content. This is the case for most teachers but it is true that learning these strategies to become better readers then they will just continue on in their leaning by going through the motions of not knowing how good of a read they can be.

Many students in my classroom come into school each day and they go through the motions of the day. They do not try in school until they are pushed to reach their potential. Part of that is because they "don't care" but its really becasue they are struggling. A good teacher will know when students are just not trying becasue the material is too difficult and it is that teachers job to encourage students to learn new stategies to make them a better reader.

Reading is connected to everything not only in school but in life. Eventually students get to a grade where they are done learning to read and now they are reading to learn. Imaging reading to learn about something else and not being able to understand or comprehend what is being taught. And then being TESTED on that material. Is that fair to those students? That is something that happens everyday in the lives of a struggling reader no matter what grade they are in and the only way to fix it is to go back and reteach reading stragies directly to them so that they CAN understand that text.

Chapter 5 in our text begins by discussion what an infrence is. Accoring to Beers, an infrence is " the ability to connect what is in the text with that is in the mind to create an educated guess." Both adults and childrens are able to make infrences however an infrence is much different than comprehension. Comprehension is grasping infromation that was directly from the text. It is important as teachers to be able to show students the steps to be able to make infrences independently.
 * Chapter 5 "Learning to Make an Infrence" (June 30, 2011)**

Once way that teachers can help students get on the right path to making infrences is to make comments to students to get them to think more independently about the text. For example a teacher might say "figure out explinations for these events occuring in the text" or "after reading this section of the text, see if you can explain to me in your own words why the character acted this way." By asking questions and promting students, it will get their minds churring about the text.

In my own experience, many students when asked a question about what happened in the text, often just anwser with one word or a phrase. This is often because they do not have a full understand of the text. By having students make infrences, they are usually all of the information that they do have to make an educated guess to what is happening. Also, it is imortant to push students to use their own words so that they can expand what they are saying. By talking about text with students get them to think about it outloud and gain a better understanding. In the classroom that I am in now, after we read a chapter of our read aloud book each moring, we allow the students to "turn and talk" about what they just read. Then we join together as a big class group to make bigger connections all together. By turning and talking first, students are able to practice what they want to say before they share with everyone and the two students working together can blend ideas from one another.

Chapter 6 is all about pre reading strategies or things that you can do with your students before they read that will benefit them and allow them to make easier connections with the text while they are reading. Some simple things that teachers often do before reading the text is identify vocab words and intorduce characters. In this chapter Beers also explains more activities and strategies that students can do as pre reading strategies.
 * Chapter 6: Frontloading Meaning ( July 5, 2011)**

One strength that students often have that teacehrs can use for pre reading strategies is connecting new information that they will be learning, to information that they already know. By activating students prior knowledge, gives them confidence in learning something new. Another strength is to use how "nosey" kids are to make them learn. Students often ask questions like "what are we doing today" or "whats for lunch" becasue they like to anticipate the day. Teachers often use this to their advantage and have students anticipate what they are going to be reading. It one thing for teachers to know about these strategies but it is important that they actually use them in their classroom before students begin reading.

Also in this chapter, Beers explains what a KWL chart is. A KWL chart is a chart that has three collums, what you know, what you want to know, and what you have learned. This activity is great to use with students as a pre reading, during reading, and after reading and helps them see connections through all of these categories. I was able to use one of these charts in my classroom when reading about the Write Brothers. Students had a lot of questions and were interested in learning about them and how they built the first airplane. By having their questions and comments about the Write Brothers up on our KWL chart while we were reading, let us go back to them after reading to make connections from the text. I would highly recommend using this in a classroom becasue it gets students involved in what they are learning becasue the chat is filled with their ideas.