When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 13

(Page 260) “Though we can say (and should say), ‘You can do it!’ on a daily basis, the reality is that unless students believe us, they won’t do it, won’t even attempt to do it. And students won’t believe us unless we create opportunities for success.”
I whole-heartedly agree with Beers when she basically writes about building community with kids. We’re never going to get kids to reach their full potential if they don’t think we have a genuine concern for them. Having a rapport with students is essential for them to be successful in class. Think about it: which teachers in school did you work the hardest for? I suspect it’s the ones you thought cared about you. I really like that Beers explains that just because students feel valued in class doesn’t mean we have to lower our expectations. I think if we have an environment where students feel safe, that’s all the more reason to RAISE our expectations—they’re going to be more willing to work for us, so we have the opportunity taken them to new heights!

(Page 274) “We suddenly also understand why young adult literature, with characters like the readers, will appeal more readily to students than adult classics.”

Amen! Perhaps if my teachers in high school had given me some YA literature, I would have actually read a book instead of the Cliff’s Notes. (Not that Cliff’s Notes are available for YA lit—another advantage of using it!) I really enjoyed reading about the stages of literary appreciation. I was able to reflect on students I’ve taught in the past and think about the stage they were as they were reading. What really got me thinking was the fifth stage of reading, “often not ever seen, but usually not seen before the college years.” Under the implications section, Beers notes that students at the fifth stage gain enjoyment from literary devices. Perhaps this is why so many of our students struggle with figurative language and other lit devices while reading. While they’re able to identify them in isolation, I think they have a more difficult time with them in general reading. If they’re only on the second or third stage of reading, they may not really be able to identify these things with much ease. I guess we just have to ensure that they read LOTS so that they can get to all of the stages!

Winter Literacy Conference

I hope you all had a wonderful time at the Winter Literacy Conference! If you're able to leave a conference with at least one new thing you can turn around and use in your classroom, then it was worth it. Since we all went to different breakout sessions, take a few minutes to share something you learned that will be useful for your classroom. If there's something from the keynote speaker, Nancy Akhavan, that you found especially helpful, share how you will be able to use that information.

I attended the "Making Vocabulary Connections" session and discovered the book Les Trois Cochons by Sheila Herbert Collins that can be used to teach students how to use context clues to determine meaning. (It also shows how background knowledge is important in determining word meaning as well.) This book is a version of The Three Little Pigs with some French words tossed in every now and then. Students are able to use their background knowledge of the original story, look at the stems within the words, and use the rest of the sentence to determine meaning of the French words.

And kudos to Jamie and Christy on a great job with their book club session. If you missed their session, be sure to ask them about book clubs in their classrooms. They've been having great success with them!

When Kids Can’t Read: Pages 127-137; Subjects Matter: Pages 114-122

For me, the during reading concept often seemed to be the trickiest of the before, during, and after reading options. With before reading, you’re setting up the reading and providing the background information needed to make sense of the text. After reading, you’re checking for what they understood. So what’s up with this during reading stuff? If you stop and have students do something while they’re reading, wouldn’t that technically be considered an after reading activity since they had to stop reading? It all eventually made sense to me…with during reading process, we’re responsible for teaching the students HOW to read the text.

On page 137 Beers writes, “Students often don’t know how to do all this thinking. For too long we’ve told them to ‘think carefully’ about what they’ve read without showing them how to do that thinking.” When using during reading strategies, it’s more of a formative assessment, so we can see where student thinking breaks down. If students aren’t using good reading strategies, they’re going to have difficulty understanding what they’ve read. The problem is that many students don’t know what they should be doing as they read, so it’s our responsibility to show them. And of course this goes back to why all content area teachers are teachers of reading—most English teachers would not be very proficient at explaining what thoughts should be going through one’s mind when reading a lab report or a word problem, just as the math or science teacher would probably struggle to analyze a poem or piece of prose.

So…questions, questions, questions. Which of the during reading strategies from Beers and/or Daniels did you try? What material were you using as your anchor text? How did your students do with it? Do you think it was helpful? What would you do differently next time?

Be thinking about these strategies and which one you’d like to use with your new book club. The role sheets we used last time were intended as a training ground of the types of things you should be thinking about as you read. I was going to choose the Post-It note strategy for us all to do with our next book club, but after further reflection, I think I’ll let y’all decide as individual groups which strategy you’d like to use. Be sure to bring your textbooks to class, so you can refer to them in your groups!