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440 Book Presentation. When Kids Can’t Read by Kylene Beers Exit 57 --> Emily, Stewart, Coleen, Will, Shirley, Katie and Lauren. Chapter 1: Defining Moment.
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440 Book Presentation When Kids Can’t Read by Kylene Beers Exit 57 --> Emily, Stewart, Coleen, Will, Shirley, Katie and Lauren
Chapter 1: Defining Moment “George did what I have come to believe is one of the most powerful things an adolescent who struggles with literacy can do: George just showed up. Every day that year, George came to class. Yes, he certainly seemed disengaged from most of what we did, and it’s true that he seldom brought his books to class or did anything that would prepare him for class, but he showed up” (6).
Chapter 1 Continued • There is no one answer to understanding why kids can’t read because every child has different experiences and learning styles. • There is no single answer, but there are answers.
Chapter 2:Creating Independent Readers • Independent Reader: Readers who are skilled at the cognitive and affective parts of reading and see benefit in and derive pleasure from reading. • Cognitive: Comprehension, vocabulary, decoding and word recognition. • Affective: Motivation, enjoyment, engagement. • Struggling Readers can be anyone given the right text. • It’s what the student does when a text gets tough that makes the difference
Chapter 2 Continued Reading Problems can be grouped into 3 Areas: • Cognitive Confidence – lack the abilities to read independently • Social and Emotional Reading Confidence – have had so many moments of failure with reading that they dislike it and believe they can’t do it 3. Text Confidence – Can’t find a text they like, read all texts like they’re the same (science v. language arts), can’t finish a text. When one area improves the other areas improve as well.
Chapter 3: Assessing Dependent Readers’ Needs • Not being able to read can mean many different things. By breaking down what students can and cannot do, it becomes much more manageable of a task to determine what the teacher needs to do to help the student. • Some of the things good readers do: • Are aware of text features • Make inferences about the text • Use prior knowledge to inform inferences • They “hear” the text as they read the words
Chapter 3 Continued Strategies outlined in book are based on three premises: 1. Teachers—not programs—are the critical element in a student’s success. 2. The goal of reading is comprehension. 3. Comprehension is a complex, abstract activity.
Chapter 4: Explicit Instruction in Comprehension We must teach strategies that help comprehension, such as: • clarifying; comparing & contrasting; connecting to prior experience; inferencing; predicting; questioning the text; recognizing the author’s purpose; seeing causal relationships; summarizing; visualizing (p. 41)
Chapter 4 Continued • Teaching comprehension strategies explicitly: • Decide which strategies you want to model and which text you want to use ahead of time 2. Tell your students directly what strategies you will be modeling. 3. Read the passage aloud and stop to model the strategies as you go through the text 4. Continue modeling as needs indicate or when genre changes.
Chapter 5: Learning to Make an Inference • Inference: the ability to connect what is in the text with what is in the mind to create an educated guess; inferences are essential for comprehension (p. 62) • Skilled teachers pose these questions to help students develop inferencing skills: • “Look for pronouns and figure out what words to connect them to.” • “Figure out explanations for these events.” • “Think about the setting and see what details you can add.”
Chapter 5 Continued • After you read this section, see if you can explain why the character acted this way.” • “Look for words you don’t know and see if any of the other words in the sentence or surrounding sentences can give you an idea of what those unknown words mean.” • “As you read this section, look for clues that would tell you how the author might feel about [blank].”
Chapter 5 Continued Dependent readers look to the text to supply all the information and all the answers; when it is not readily apparent, they get frustrated and shut down; independent readers understand the “transactional nature” of reading, back and forth between reader and text (p. 69)
Chapter 6: Frontloading Meaning • Beers discusses the importance of activating prior knowledge, encouraging predictions, and active reading. • “The more we frontload students’ knowledge of a text and help them become actively involved in constructing meaning prior to reading, the more engaged they are likely to be as they read the text. Dependent readers must be reminded often that comprehension begins prior to reading and extends into the discussions they have after they’ve finished reading” (101).
Chapter 7: Constructing Meaning • Dependent readers often fail to see reading as an active process because so much of the activity of reading occurs internally. • Move reading from an individual internal activity to a collaborative external activity during which students read aloud in groups, make predictions, pause to explain vocabulary, ask questions, etc.
Chapter 7 Continued • Guided and mandatory rereading to teach struggling readers the importance of rereading • Focus is on teachers to teach students how to think what they’re reading and not to just tell them to think about what they’ve read.
Chapter 8: Extending Meaning “Just closing a book doesn’t close off the thinking that shapes our understanding of a text.” (139) This section focuses on after-reading strategies, illuminating 5 techniques: Scales, Somebody Wanted But So, Retelling, Text Reformulation and It Says- I Say.
Chapter 8 Continued Scales- Helps students make contrasts and comparisons, beneficial for students who need help organizing their thoughts. Somebody Wanted But So (SWBS) - Assists students in summarizing a passage in a more structured way. Retelling - verbally recalling the text, with the aid of a rubric, and charted over time.
Chapter 8Continued Text Reformulation–Takes a text and translating it into a different type of text. Encourages students to talk about texts, and also to identify main ideas, cause and effect relationships, themes, and main characters while sequencing, generalizing and making inferences (160). It Says-I Say - a visual strategy responding to a question from text, from prior knowledge and then synthesizing the two (166). A visual way to form inferences.
Chapter 9 Vocabulary When it comes to vocabulary instruction, "Effective means that students learn the words, use the words, and remember the words." (p. 179) Rather than forcing kids to memorize twenty words they may never see again and will likely forget, teachers should "focus on fewer words and use those words in our own speech." ( p.183) The idea is to make an effort to use words yourself in class for at least two weeks before you formally introduce them as part of a lesson. Beers recommends 5-8 words at a time.
Chapter 9 Continued Context Clues can be counterproductive. Visual aids are crucial to dependent readers’ development of relationships. Reading aloud to students is key, as is daily SSR (sustained silent reading). "Asking the right question at the right time often gives us just the right information to keep a student's learning moving in a meaningful direction." (p. 202)
Chapter 10: Fluency and Automaticity 3 levels of Reading: Independent, Instructional and Frustational Level Automaticity- refers to the reader’s ability to recognize words without consciously decoding. Fluency - the ability to read smoothly and easily at a good pace, with proper phrasing and expression. Having fluency allows readers to spend their cognitive energy on constructing meaning.
Chapter 10 Continued On Improving Fluency non-fluent readers often don’t have practice with reading and need time to read frequently. Suggestions for improving fluency include: Prompting, not correcting Providing varied opportunities to hear texts Teaching phrasing and intonation directly Improving recognition of high-frequency and sight words
Chapter 11: Word Recognition Word Recognition: the many ways that students can access print. It is essential to address that recognition and comprehension are different. Research shows that explicit phonics instruction beyond 1st grade does not make for fluent readers (242).
Chapter 11 Continued 10 suggestions for Teaching Word Recognition: Teach high-freq words - Teach chunking Teach common syllables - Teach rime patterns Assess what students know - Get your mouth ready Teach rules about syllables - Prefixes, suffixes and Teach the Schwa sound root words Use instructional level texts
Chapter 12: Spelling Stages of Spelling Development "Research shows us that spelling is a developmental process (Reed, 1971; Beers, 1980; Beers and Henderson, 1977; Schlagal, 1989; Templeton, 1983, 2002). Children advance through stages as their understanding of letter-sound relationships broadens." (There are 5 stages of spelling development, including Emergent, Letter Name, Within-Word Pattern, Syllable Juncture, and Derivational Constancy.)
Chapter 12 Continued Spelling Instruction - Differentiation p. 249-50 "Giving [struggling students at different stages in spelling development] all the same list means somebody will be too challenged and someone else won't be challenged enough. It's this one-list-fits-all mentality that results in memorizing words rather than understanding how words work."
Chapter 13: Creating the Confidence to Respond Confidence is critical to your classroom. Teachers have a two-fold task: to provide a risk-taking environment and also build confidence through support. In order to help students engage texts and feel confident, teachers need to give students different ways to engage the text.
Chapter 13 Continued Strategies for Encouraging Literary Appreciation: *Use Appropriate Literature (Easy to access and easy to relate to) *Give Students the “Smart Words” that let them talk about texts in an informed way *Provide Time for Sustained Silent Reading
Chapter 13 Continued Four Types of Aliterates: *Dormant Readers: Like to read, call themselves readers, but because of one circumstance or another, they don’t read. *Uncommitted Readers: Won’t search for books on there own, but will enjoy a book given to them to read *Unmotivated Readers: Have a negative attitude toward reading and those who like to read. The most difficult students to reach. Work from their interests *Unskilled Readers: Have a negative attitude toward reading because they lack the skills to do it well.
Chapter 14: Finding the Right Book Reluctant Readers like text features (illustrations, humor, action, thin books, short chapters) Characteristics that appeal to RR’s: Visual features, mysteries, characters who face tough choices, realistic language, high-interest topics, wander-around books, biographies, short chapters, thin books, more white space on the page
Chapter 14 Continued Suggestions on Selling the Book: 1: Read Aloud 2: Read and Tease 3: Book jacket bulletin boards 4: Take them to the Library 5: Create a “Good Books” Box 6: Know your students’ interests 7: Talk About the Authors
Some final thoughts… Teachers must remember that they don’t just teach a subject, they teach their students - all of whom are specific children with specific needs! Much love, the Beers crew