When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12

by Kylene Beers, G. Kylene Beers

Overview

For Kylene Beers, the question of what to do when kids can't read surfaced abruptly in 1979 when she began teaching. That year, she discovered that some of the students in her seventh-grade language arts classes could pronounce all the words, but couldn't make any sense of the text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780867095197
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	10/22/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	55,305
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range:	11 - 17 Years

About the Author

Kylene Beers, Ed.D., is a former middle school teacher who has turned her commitment to adolescent literacy and struggling readers into the major focus of her research, writing, speaking, and teaching. She is author of the best-selling When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do, co-editor (with Bob Probst and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, and co-author (with Bob Probst) of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading, all published by Heinemann. She taught in the College of Education at the University of Houston, served as Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University, and most recently acted as the Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools for the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College. Kylene has published numerous articles in state and national journals, served as editor of the national literacy journal, Voices from the Middle, and was the 2008-2009 President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is an invited speaker at state, national, and international conferences and works with teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the US. Kylene has served as a consultant to the National Governor's Association and was the 2011 recipient of the Conference on English Leadership outstanding leader award.

Table of Contents

A Defining Moment

Creating Independent Readers

Assessing Dependent Readers' Needs

Explicit Instruction in Comprehension

Helping Students Make Inferences

Frontloading Meaning: Pre-reading Activities

Constructing Meaning: During-Reading Activities

Extending Meaning: After-Reading Activities

Vocabulary

Fluency and Automaticity

Word Recognition

Spelling

Creating the Confidence to Respond

Finding the Right Book

A Final Letter to George Appendixes

Editorial Reviews

If I had to recommend just one book to middle and secondary teachers working to support struggling readers, this would have to be the book. When Kids Cant Read, What Teachers Can Do is a comprehensive handbook filled with practical strategies that teachers of all subjects can use to make reading skills transparent and accessible to adolescents. Blending theory with practice throughout, Kylene Beers moves teachers from assessment to instruction from describing dependent reading behaviours to suggesting ways to help students with vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, word recognition, response to text, and so much more. But its not just the strategies that make this book so valuable. Its the invitations to step inside a classroom and eavesdrop on teacher/student interactions. Its the student profiles, the if/then charts, the extensive booklists and, of course, the experiences of a brilliant reading teacher. This is simply the best book published to date to support struggling adolescent readers!”–Gillda Leitenberg,District-wide Coordinator, English/LiteracyToronto District School Board

From the Publisher