Chapter 15 "When Kids Can't Read"

"We must, at all times, remember that we don't teach a subject, we teach you-specific children with specifc needs."

I think this quote is a great reminder for teachers that kids learn at different stages and in different ways, therefore need to be taught at different levels in different ways. After working with many disabled students, I have found that teaching at different levels and modes depending on the childs learnign strategies is critical for them to master a content.

Chapter 12,13 "When Kids Can't Read"

Research shows us that spelling is a developmental process. Children advance through stages as their understanding of letter-sound relationships broadens."

I found this quote to be very interesting but so true! While working with Sarah, and the other children in her classroom, I am able to see a huge diversity in the different levels all the 1st graders were at with their reading! I would work with one child who had excellent fluency and voice when she read her basal reading, while another student wouldn't even be familiar with their sight words. It is quite a challenge to change your different styles of teaching mode when you are working with such a diverse group. I believe it is crucial to encourage students who are excelling at a faster rate to KEEP excelling! Do not hold them back so the rest of the group can catch up. And than on the other hand, keep group readings at a level where everyone can show their progression and strengths in reading. Spelling, reading and writing, I think, go hand-in-hand and if you have a student that is excelling in reading, challenge their spelling as well.



"Helping students develop social and emotional confidence require patience on our part"

If you are an engaged, aware teacher, you will know the students in the class who are comfortable with others, students who aren't and students that may be TOO comfortable. I think boosting self image and esteem is vital especially for a preteen group. I struggled with self-confidence and I do not blame it on my teachers or school, but it definately would have made a difference with a little more encouragement on their part. Reading in front of the class is either an enjoyable task for teens or its their worst nightmare! Being aware of whose comfortable and who is not is important so that you do not place someone on the spot to possibly ruin their day or feelings toward reading, but than not to give someone too much spotlight than they already deserve. Reading needs to be a fun, creative activity that doesn't just involve sitting at a desk taking turns reading. Creating the book into a script or play can be a great way for students to engage with one another and show a different light than just being contained to desk.

Chapter 10,11 "When Kids Can't Read"

" Typically, when looking at beginning readers, researchers have measured fluency by oral reading rates. Reading rates usually increase faster during the elementary school years than during the middle and high school years. Furthermore, teh mroe a reader reads, th emore her reading rate will improve."

After we finished our Author Book chat wi th author Dwight MacPherson who wrote "Kid Houdini" our class discussed how graphic novels can benefit children who struggle in reading. One of the first benefits we came up with was FLUENCY! Struggling readers will enjoy graphic novels because of their lively, colorful illustration and the voice that is noticed throughout the story. Students will start to read the story not realizing that the are putting emphasis in the voice and consequently starto to increase their fluency. The text comes in short phrases, and so the students won't fee overwhelmed with little text and will also be able to visualize the story rather than having to read, comprehend and visualize all together. This can be great practice before a student has to test their fluency with basal readings for their teacher.


When I am working with middle school and high school students who have trouble with word recognition, I look for four things...

1. I want to see hwo many high-frequency and sight words they can quickly identify
2. I want to see if they can read single-syllable words but not multisyllabic words
3.I want to see if, when they are reading mulitsyllabic words, they are guessing at the word based on the first few letters or if they are reading through the entire word, just very slowly.
4. I want to see what they know about letters and sounds.


These are the same procedures and steps that I took when I was working with my struggling reader, Sarah! We focused on a new sight word list every week and would constantly go over the pronounciation, spelling and sounding out of the words so she could better master brief reading. Even though Sarah was able to know her letters and sounds well, middle school and high school students may have forgotten the simple dynamics and conventions that are involved with writing and reading. Phonics is now the number one thing teachers have to teach their students when they begin to read and write and needs to be repetitive throughout their highschool even college years.

Chapter 8,9 "When Kids Can't Read"

"Teach Students How To Use the Context as a Clue"

I mention this strategy to a lot of the students I work with who struggle with reading and comprehending based off uknown vocabulary terms. The best way that I usually present Context Clues to students is by doing practice worksheets weekly, that way they can learn what to look for in a sentence. Beers uses the word jaundiced as an example. "The best clue comes in the second sentence, where a synonym for jaundiced is offered-pessimistic." By replacing unfamiliar words with words that students may think will work is a great way to experiment and work independently to discover an unknown vocabulary.

Chapter 8,9 "When Kids Can't Read"

"It Says-I Say"

Question It Says I Say And So
1. Read the 2. Find information 3. Think about 4. Combine what
Question from the text that what you know the text says with
will help you answer about that what you know
the question information to come up with
the answer

The "It Says-I Say" strategy is a great way for teachers to present a way for Struggling Readers to make inferences. It allows them to get a perspective of the what the stoory is trying to get across and forces them to search in the story for an expository answer, then try to relate to what they know (making inferences). The "It Says-I Say" process is helpful and beneficial for struggling readers to think and talk through their opinions and thoughts about makign inferences with stories.

Chapter 6,7 "When Kids Can't Read"

"Activating Prior knowledge- Crucial part of reading-thinking process."

Activating schema! Another wonderful way to initiate comprehension and inferences. Beers quotes "I'm not sure it's the best way to help students become actively engaged with a text....and thinking about the selection and how they will read the selection before they begin the text." I had mentioned before that asking questions about a story is important in order to activate comprehension and schema. If they are able to search through the story and do practices by looking at "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid," they will be able to practice looking for important ideas and main details. By getting a descriptive story such as "The diary of a Wimpy Kid" and graphic novels such as "Emily Edison" or "Kid Houdini" struggling readers can start to maek a connection between illustration, selected text and the comprehension questions given after the story is read. a K-W-L chart would be a great tool to use when teaching students to activate schema in reading a story. (What I Know, What I Want to Know and What I Found Out).



"The Think-Aloud strategy helps readers think about how they make meaning. As students read, they pause occasionally to think aloud about connectionsthey are making, images they are creating, problems with understanding that they are encountering , and ways they see fo fixing those problems."


By thinking aloud teachers can understand what students are thinking and getting from the text they are reading. This way the teacher can direct her or his students in the right direction of what they should be getting from the text and story and to even get a different outlook and perspective on a selection. This also helps students to get corrective feedback on their responses and conclusions from the story. This will help progress their inferences and comprehension of the story, therefore allowing them to progress in their reading.

Chapter 4,5 "When Kids Can't Read"

"Read the following paragraph and then, in the margin, write what you think is happening in this text:

He put down $10.00 at the window. The woman behind the window gave $4.00. The person next to him gave him $3.00, but he gave it back to her. So, when they went inside, she bought him a large bag of popcorn.

This quick practice was a great example on different ways make make inferences. Making inferences can be very tricky for a struggling reader, but by analyzing our own types of inferences, then we can begin to show studetns all the steps involved in making an inference. I usually look into situations in a story a lot harder than other people. But if I discuss what I have came up with and work with other people who are reading the same passage as me, I can see why they made the inferences they made. We discussed this passage in class and I was surprised at all the different answers and comments I heard. For myself, I thought the passage was a math problem and started to look at it from a math point of view. For others, they saw it the way it was meant to be seen-as a date between a man and a woman at the movies. Making inferences can be rough and is something I struggle with when I am reading. Beers gives great advice in Chapter 5 on how to appoint these struggles for struggling readers.

Chapter 4,5 "When Kids Can't Read"

"And just how do I teach any of those strategies" (referring to Comprehension tasks)

I have covered comprehension and Blooks Taxonomy several times in my past blogs to make my point about HOW important I believe comprehension is when dealing with struggling readers. But more importantly, how can we teach comprehension? Beers suggests to teach comprehension EXPLICITYL and DIRECTLY in order to have the biggest effect on students. The first step to take when teaching students explict and direct comprehension, you must PLAN and MODEL what you will be presenting. You need to establish some specfic strategies to use. Some strategies that I have found useful would be Graphic Organizers (Venn Diagrams, Webs...etc.) You can appoint the main ideas and importatn detaisl in the reading. Secondly, Beers suggests to present what strategy the child will be using and how to apply it to the reading by speaking aloud. It is important to TELL the students what you are thinking and WHY you are thinking it. Overall, Beers suggestions go on to three or four more steps to use when teaching comprehension. Even though most of your students will be able to comprehend stories quicker than others, it would be convenient to represent these steps to take at the beginning of the year so you can set the expectations for the rest of the year.

Chapter 2,3 "When Kids Can't Read"

Chapter 2
"Over the years, continued observation of student's reading behaviors and careful listening to their comments and conversations about thsi complicated act have helped me revise my understanding of how we assist students in becoming lifelong, independent readers....Now I recognize that there are multiple aspects that must be addressed when working with struggling readers-beginning with defining struggling reader."

Beers describes a struggling reader perfectly when I apply all the characterstics to a child that I had the opportunity to work with the past 10 weeks with her reading. We will call her Sarah. Sarah is a spunky and outgoing first grader, but is constantly struggling in her reading. When I bring books for us to read together she gets suddenlty "sleepy, slumpy, eyes roll and she ignores everything else" just as Beers described. By creating encouragement and confidence, a student can begin to enjoy reading by taking a step by step process, just as Beers suggests. Once I created this confidence for Sarah and brought in stories that she could look at and relate the text with the illustration, she found that she was a great reader and could excel. When working with junior high students, many of them are dependant readers and Beers describes them as students that need help to comprehend text. Like we had discussed in Chapter 14 of this book, by bringing in stories that are appealing, a struggling reader will have more motivation and better comprehension of the story, therefore bring them to learn different strategies and steps to progress to chapter stories that may lack white space, illustration and large print.


Chapter 3
"Students can be taught to use a range of comprehension strategies so that these strategies influence how they make meaning from a text."

I think comprehension questions asked before, during and after a reading is vital in order to evaluate is a student is comprehending what they are reading, or guiding them to comprehending the story. In young adult novels, a lot of underlying meaning is hidden within a story that many students do not pick up on. Applying Blooms Taxonomy to asking questions to students to help build schema during a story is helpful for not only the student but the teacher. By asking questions before, during and after reading students can maintain attention and learn what to look for in a story in order to comprehend the characters, plot and important details in the story.

Chapter 14 "When Kids Can't Read"

"If we can't use ourselves as guides for what makes a good book, then we're left with using what students tell us. If we listen, we'll hear very specific criteria for what makes a book appealign to a reluctant reader."

Getting students to read, especially pre-teen to teenagers, can be quite a challenge. By listening to what they find appealing, we can save time by giving them novels that they either can relate with or have interest in. Growing up I found books over kids my own age and also deal with situations that I could relate with to be interesting and capture my attention. In WK, Beers talks about different books that students will typically choose such as fiction stories that are thin with short chapters, a lot of white space, and some illustration and intriguing characters. When we read "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid" in our literature groups we found a lot of different things to talk about, such as the struggles Greg was having with his family, fitting in at school, and playing soccer. This story would be a great first novel to use as a read for your class because it is fiction, includes a lot of illustration and can relate to its audience. I think it is also crucial to make sure and ask the class what they thought of the story as a group so you, as the teacher, can make some modifications for your next group of students.


"Suggestion #4: Take Students to Your School Library"

Beers took a survey of how many English teachers took their students to the library and many of them answered with NONE! I found this to be shocking but not surprising. Being in in 6th grade, we never took trips to the library, and to this day I am still unsure on how to properly check out a book in the library, therefore avoid going to the library. I think it is crucial to go to the library at least every month and show students the proper way to check books out, where to find interesting books, magazines and articles, and also how to find a book that is appealing without having to read the whole novel in the library.

Author Chat

WOW! What an experience! I really enjoyed speaking with the author of "Kid Houdini," Dwight MacPherson, in a chat room along with the rest of my class and professor. He was laid back and answered a lot of great questions! My favorite aspect about the chat was that we were really able to get an idea of the man behind the story. I was able to understand where his characters came from, how he created them and why he wrote the story! Not to mention, he wrote the story and had it completed in less than a month (which I found to be very impressive). His son is extremely ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and struggles focusing on reading stories in class and at home. He wrote the graphic novel "Kid Houdini" so that his son could find a story interesting and entertaining without feeling overwhelmed and bored. "Kid Houdini" is very visual and I can see why the author created the story the way he did. It has a lot of visual and a lot of VOICE, so children can understand and comprehend the story a little bit easier than they could by solely reading a story. By speaking with Mr. Macpherson I was able to becom inspired to write my own graphic novel for all students alike with disabilities. I have a younger sister who is deaf and constantly struggles with comprehending what she has read. Even though she is a sophomore in College at Gallaudette University, I think it would be enjoyable for her to get to read graphc novels for enjoyment.

One aspect of the book chat I did not enjoy was the crowd of people. I think it would have been better organized if there were only about 5 people at a time (including the author) to speak and ask questions. I believe it would go smoother and everyone would get their vital questions answered, and the author wouldn't be too overwhelmed. I am not sure if I would do book chats with my own student, it would have to depend on age and convenience of technology.

Overall, I enjoyed the book chat a lot and look forward to doing more in the next school year.

Literature Circle: Round 2

The "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" ended very differently from what we had imagined it to be. Not that we necessarily had anything specific in mind, but just surprised in that the school year ended that Greg met a new girl. We didn't have too much to talk about, because I don't think this book contains a lot of problems and ways that they are resolved. However, it is entertaining listening to how each of us could probably relate to this book if we were back in junior high or elementary because I do believe it has a lot of similar daily struggles. Meeting new girls or boys, being jealous of friends, and having to deal with awkward situations such as sleepovers. We were missing a member of our group who is a boy and the only boy in our group so it was also disappointing to not have a males opinion on Gregory and maybe why he acted the way he did. I don't know if this book would be the best way to have young students start their first literature circle, but it does make for great story time.

Chapter 2 and 3 of Building a Knowledge Base in Reading

"Interaction is the key: How those around the child-parents, siblings, caregivers-talk and engage in experiences with the child seems to hold critical importance."

-I think this comment and paragraph goes hand-in-hand to what we discussed in the first few meetings of class. Growing up with a sister who was deaf and being exposed to the deaf culture and to sign language made a huge impact on my outlook on life and especially on my learning. I grew up at a more mature rate than other students because I felt as if it was my responsibility to watch over my younger sister, hence I was more independant with my school work and within certain activities. I think the Carnegie Task Force (researched brain development within the first 5 years) makes five very valid points about how the brain grows and develops depending on the surrounding environment.



Emergent Literacy

I found this section to be particulary interesting because as young children we enjoyed learning nursery rhymes, reading funny stories, using our imagination with our friends and understood certain places such as McDonalds based off the giant yellow "M." I find it interesting to see that read alouds before bed time and the modeling behavior we see from our teachers and parents make such a huge impact on our knowledge of literacy. Such as being aware of print and holding a book in the right direction and knowing that books are read left to right. I was a strong reader as a child and I have been working with this fun, energetic first grader who we will call Sally. Sally is very bright, but struggles in reading. She is distracted easily and does not understand simple repeptive things that most first graders should recognize. Today we worked on a fairly easy book called "Moving" and each page had a different animal and described what each animal does. For example one page said "I am a frog. I can jump." Each page started the same..."I am...and I can..." Sally was not able to pick up from this and struggled on each page to read the beginning of the sentences. In my opinion I believe it was because she was not read to as a child and therefore unable to pick up on simple patterns such as that. Emergent Literacy is very crucial for young developing minds.

"As schools find themselves in this richness of diversity (students), they need to be attentive to waht students brings as a framework, building on their experiences, values, and background knowledge to introduce them to more public forms of Literacy."

Culture and Literacy are definately compatible. Reading to children is obviously important, but WHAT you read to children is just as crucial. It is easy for teachers to teach about different cultures but to read and bring a child in on someones own life and culture, I think, has just as much of an impact. Especially if you are to read a book from several different cultures on a montly basis. Diversity is becoming extremely popular for many districts around Texas and being culturally aware will not only make an impact on your students but also yourself.


"By making believe that failure is something kids do, as different from how it is something done to them, and then by explaining their failure in terms of other things they do, we likely contribute to the maintenance of school failure."

Even though this quote is extremely wordy, I think I am following what McDermott is trying to explain. Teachers expect failure from culturally diverse students therefore they will be unsuccessful. It is wise to not expect failure but to expect EXCELLENCE! By doing this it will create confidence and less frustration for a child and to also include his or hers culture into their daily routine so that they have a feeling of security and not an American overload.

Literature Group Meeting # 1

"The Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is not only amusing to read as an individual but even more fun to discuss in a group. We could all relate to different scenarios Greg had been in throughout the story, whether it was the bully, the nerdy/weird kid down the street, or his two obnoxious brothers. I was also able to learn a lot about the story that I didn't pick up when I read it by myself. One of the guys in my group made a good point about the back of the story where it claimed that it would almost bypass "Harry Potter." We discussed this for awhile, and came to the conclusion that the "Harry Potter" books will never be passed in favor from "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid." Although the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is a great book, we have yet to find any problem or pointed out scenario in the story. It tells of Greg's day to day problems but each of them are never worked out in the end. We still have half the story to read so I guess we will see if something comes up. We predict he will go to Military School but thats not for sure a definite.

Chapter 1 of Building a Knowledge Base in Reading

I appreciate how this chapter starts off by stating that Reading and Literacy are interchangeable. I think it is important to know that reading, writing, speaking and listening are all key elements in literacy and especially when you are trying to get a young person to read.

"To achieve NAEP's proficient level, readers should be able to demonstrate an overall understanding of the text, providing inferential as well as literal information...to extend ideas in the test by making inferences, drawing conclusions and making connections to their own experiences and to other readings...to summarize and apply information."

-This is an extremely controversial and frustrating goal for many teachers to achieve, especially if they have students who have learning or emotional disabilities. Many students are able to achieve this goal but lately many students are falling behind, because I believe the requirements for students every year is going up. I remember as a Kindergartner I did not have to read but solely work on my letters and sounds. Now, kindergartners are reading along with the teacher and spelling out their names and words. I think this is great for many students who are capable of mastering this at such a young age, but administration acts like all the students should be able to concept this when in fact, I think it is normal for students not to be at that level so young. There is a fine line between being able to master reading a language and being able to apply it in tests. I have learned the different learning styles (kinaesthetic, aural, and visual) and these all apply to many different students, but what about the students who can apply their knowledge to worksheets and assignments but not tests? I may be able to understand test-taking better than others because I am a terrible test taker, and understand many parents concerns when their students do great and excel in the classroom but when it comes to TAKS they don't seem to apply what they have learned.