Blog: Why Kids Can’t Read
Chapters 1 – 3
Kristie Hofelich
October 19, 2006

This book is so refreshing after plowing through Bridging English! It has a very straight-forward, honest approach that I appreciate immensely. I love the insight and experience with which Beers writes, as it allows me to take a look into her world, and compare it with my own. For this reason, I would like to approach this blog in the following manner: I will show quotations that struck me as I read and explain why they had this effect upon me.

1. “Maybe that teacher already understood what I now understand – that when kids give up and drop out, they perpetuate the vicious cycle in which their offspring grow up in an a-literate environment and become the next generation of struggling readers whose teachers might chant: ‘These kids can’t read’” (Beers 7).
This passage resonated with me because I am a firm believer that in order to affect major change in our school and the world, as teachers we must work our hardest to break the chain of perpetual non-readers. We must work to help kids with their basic comprehension difficulties, whatever those might be, in order to get them up to grade level in their reading. However, we can’t stop there! This call for duty requires us to move beyond the basics and find interesting and engaging methods of instruction to reach all students once they are on grade level with their reading. If we do this, we can capture them and create life-long readers and learners who choose to engage in reading for pleasure, and are independent readers in all subject, genres, etc. This will help us reach students who can read, but choose not read (aliterate), students who have such difficulty reading that they give up, students who struggle but get through it, and proficient readers.

2. “I was beginning to learn that studying the process is far different than grading the product. That year, I found myself scribbling comments that students made on whatever sheet of paper I had handy – from the back of my grade book to someone’s spelling test. I loved capturing their words to read and reread later, not at all sure of what I was looking for, but positive that their thinking aloud was an indication of something important. I felt like an eavesdropper, and years later, was relieved to discover I could call these notes ‘anecdotal records’” (Beers 11).
I absolutely love the idea of recording students’ comments, insights, conversations and complaints because it gives you the chance to really stop and consider the thinking processes the student goes through while saying the things he/she says. I think that now technology can be used to make the paper trail less ominous, i.e. IPods, tape recorders, microphones, etc. Then, the things students say can be easily used for conferences or made into podcasts. As Beers constantly points out, we can find the answers to kids’ reading problems if we just listen to them – really listen to them. It must be so frustrating for students who repeatedly tell their teachers that they don’t understand what they read, only to get the standard answers back, or to be ignored completely. I have never been one of those students, so it is very beneficial to my teaching for me to read the accounts of those who do struggle with everyday reading.

3. I went through the Dependent Reading Behaviors list on pages 24 – 26 and checked off any examples that applied to my 14-year-old brother, who has struggles of his own with reading comprehension that I have not yet been able to help him conquer. I have been trying to explain to him that sometimes you simply need to approach reading in a different way in order to overcome your struggles, but now he wants to know how he can do that. He fits into several of the dependent reader behaviors, and I appreciate that Beers gives practical advice on how to approach helping students with these difficulties. I hope to put her theories to the test so that my brother can move forward with his reading, and not just skate by on his writing ability, which is much higher. I want him to have reading as an escape time for individual pleasure, and to excel in it through college. I don’t want him to be Beers’ George.

Chapter 15

“In every lucky life there is one teacher who places her finger upon our soul.”
William Gibson

I truly believe that without the focus on becoming a complete teacher, I will not be able to be this one teacher who places a “finger upon the soul” of my students. This chapter forced me to look inside myself and decide what I believe as a future educator, and what defines me as a person. Each of the categories presented, definition, motivation, goals, methods, epistemology, and philosophy are all things that I need to fully consider and have a solid answer for when it comes time to look for a full-time teaching position at the end of this year. Inevitably administrators will ask me questions about why I want to teach, how I am going to teach, and what I have to offer to their community of learners/faculty. We have been working on defining these things throughout the MAT program, and I feel confident that by the time I go for interviews, I will not have a problem telling anyone my philosophies on teaching.
The only problems I see with my being hired are that there may not be a job opening at the school in which I want to teach, and the fact that there is a lot of game playing that goes on when it comes to hiring/firing within the Public School System. This is not to say that my personality, my experience with the MAT Program, my content knowledge and my passion for teaching couldn’t stand alone as reasons for hiring me. This is to say that in most cases, who you know and the relationships you have built with administrators, faculty and students may be more important in the hiring decision than all the right answers to the interview questions. What I mean by this is that there is a very tricky system to hiring in the school system right now because retired teachers and transfers must be honored when a position comes open at a school before new teachers can even be considered as a candidate for hiring. This makes new teachers’ chances even slimmer as there are many transfer requests every year from veteran teachers. However, if you know people in high places that value the contribution you will make as a teacher, things can be shuffled to accommodate you. In other words, if a school wants me, there are ways to bypass transfers in order to get me. I am hoping that I have set the stage for this by being involved in the school that I want to work for, by always being professional, timely and responsible, and by building relationships with influential people/students.
The second part of this chapter that I love I the section on being involved with the parents and community as much as possible. As I have always said, parents can be your best allies or your worst enemies, and it is my job to make the necessary connections with them as soon as possible in order to make the relationship a good one. The book suggests many ways of making the connection to parents, but I have two that I have decided will help my first year of teaching go much more smoothly: I would like to implement a class website that allows parents to stay in constant communication with me and to stay abreast of what is going on in the classroom and I would like to utilize parent-teacher-conferences as fully as possible to help build those necessary relationships with parents. I also plan to participate in extra-curricular activities, such as a Book Club, committee meetings, etc. in order to be seen by parents outside of the classroom setting. Sometimes I think this helps to let parents know that I am a real person, too, who likes to have fun, and who has school spirit.

Chapter 14: Planning the Lesson

Yea! I am so glad that this chapter begins by telling us all: “We want to fill that gap by articulating the intermediate steps that we and others take to transform theories about English teaching into practice” (388). I needed the reassurance that I will have at least one resource ready to help me, in addition to the wide, wide world of the internet, in planning my lessons for student teaching. I have an entire semester to plan for and I have never really had experience making practical plans that I will actually implement in a classroom with real live kids. I have decided to take this chapter and let it be a guide for the planning of my HAT project for this class, and the basis for my lesson planning for student teaching.
My experience will begin this semester with the teaching of Huckleberry Finn to Juniors and a bit of Humanities to Seniors. I will be substitute teaching during this time for the teacher I am observing, and I have been given to opportunity to design my own lessons and teach them however I would like. I will definitely implement the six-step lesson plan, though not a rigid version of this, because it will give me the security of knowing that I have thought out the process of the lesson, considered my goals for the day, and not left out anything important. I say that I will not follow this model in a rigid manner because I am always open to discussion with the students, and I will allow for teachable moments should they come up at any time during my teaching. This is really a unique opportunity because I have been given free reign to try some new, exciting things for students with whom I have already become quite familiar. One of my ideas, which is borrowed from Sara Kadjer, is to create a map of the journey of Huck Finn, having students design the map and plotting the route throughout the novel. This will serve as a great tool in teaching for me, and also as a resource for the students in preparation for their assessments on the novel.
My favorite model for instruction that is presented in this chapter is the “Individualization, Interaction, and Integration” method. This reminds us as teachers to leave much of the work up to students by allowing them to take time to grasp individual meanings from the lessons we provide. It also reminds us to encourage the communication of new ideas and thoughts on the subjects at hand so that the students can show us what they have learned, and how we may need to improve the subsequent lessons to address areas with which the students had trouble. The last thing about this model, which is my absolute favorite idea, reminds us as teachers to relate the material we are teaching to issues outside the classroom, which will help answer the inevitable question: “Why are we doing this? What does it have to do with my life? When will I ever use this again?”
The next section tells me that I should always prepare and outline for teaching, everyday. I believe that this is totally necessary for a smooth lesson, and to help remind me not to forget key ideas. My greatest model for this so far has been Pam Jett, Assistant Principal at Oldham County High School. She was my instructor over the summer for General Methods, and she had an outline prepared everyday, which helped her to stay organized, and to flow from one item to the next without fail. I thought that she was just really proficient at teaching, and was not working from an outline because she never let on to our class that she was reading from it, or even referring to it. It was there, nonetheless, and she told me later that she wouldn’t feel prepared without it. Also, if certain lessons work for me, I can always save them for the next school year, and tweak them as necessary for the new students.
I appreciated the warning from the book also; this was an honest moment in the life of a teacher. The book advises us to go to experienced teachers to ask them what works when it comes to time management and dealing with the sheer number of papers that float around everywhere in a teacher’s life. It also tells us to realize that as new teachers we will make mistakes, plenty of them, but to use them as teaching tools to help refine our best practices. I think this is real, practical advice, and I will keep this chapter handy for the upcoming assignments we will have in class.

Chapter 13: Evaluation

Through reading this chapter, I can honestly say that I have grown to appreciate the necessity for the utilization of several different types of evaluation, and I feel much more comfortable about writing my unit for this course as well. I have never spent much time studying the different ways to assess students, and I felt weakest about the specific ways in which to include the assessments within the curriculum. However, it has always seemed logical to me that in the course of a school year, I will constantly be evaluating the progress of the students in the course in order to determine the best methods for helping them to progress and achieve their learning goals.
The first idea that I really like and think is an essential part of best practice in this chapter is the idea of descriptive and diagnostic evaluation. It seems to me that in order to decide how to best meet the needs of my students, I should spend time trying to determine their ability levels, learning styles, and areas in which they struggle. If I can take the time to include this type of evaluation in my teaching practices, I will save myself a lot of trouble in the long run; if I know the strengths and weaknesses of the students I teach, I can use those to design my teaching units.
As I mentioned, however, my real problem with evaluation before reading this chapter was that I had no idea how to put into practice all of the different types of evaluation. For this reason, I appreciated the inclusion of examples, such as Table 13-1, which described a possible way to apply Bloom’s Taxonomy to a familiar work of literature. This multi-layered approach to evaluation is something that I will use because it will force me to take some time and be sure that my lesson plans take into consideration how I will give students knowledge, help them to comprehend the new knowledge, and guide them in application of the new knowledge. After all, I can’t really expect my students to have positive evaluations if I don’t give them the tools they need to achieve their goals!
Getting further into the chapter, I also saw the need for students to self-evaluate, just as I will need to reflect on my teaching practices. The text suggests: “Students need opportunities to assess their work habits, learning strategies, progress, achievements, and areas to be improved” and “students have learned to depend on others for identification of their weaknesses or confirmation of their achievements. We need to relocate some of that responsibility”(414). This is so true, not only when it comes to evaluation, but with seemingly every part of the learning process. Students have often become dependant upon an adult to help them with every single little thing, and have gained little or no independence in school. This is such a detriment because it can lead students to a false sense of security when it comes to their achievement level, and can set them up to fail. I must play an active role in helping students be self-motivated, responsible learners, and a big piece of that is self-evaluation. I wish I had been taught the importance of serious self-evaluation in high school; perhaps then it wouldn’t have been such a foreign concept when I got into the core classes of my undergraduate work.
When I came to the section on alternative grading, I have to admit that I was a bit turned off. I think that rest of the chapter outlines plenty of effective strategies for assigning grades to students without this section. Grades are a requirement in Jefferson County, which is where I hope to teach, and even though I can come up with numerous strategies for assigning those grades, they cannot be avoided. I think that grades are great for many reasons: they allow students to track their own progress in a quantitative way; they allow teachers to do the same; they give students something to work toward; they help prepare students for academic life after high school. The bottom line is that in college, there are grades. Colleges look at grade point averages to determine admission and when they award scholarships. I need to teach my students in a way that prepares them for the future, and not assigning grades, or coming up with some crazy alternative, is really doing them a disservice. This is not to say that I will press the issue so much that my students feel excessive pressure to make those grades, or that I value them only by the grade they earn. It is to say that I simply do not agree with the book’s authors when they say that grades are negative and not necessary.
Lastly, I must say a little about testing. As far as my students go, I hope to develop exams in a way that serves my students best. I have always been a poor multiple choice test taker because I over-analyze the possible answer choices, and have also had bad experiences with teachers using “trick” questions. For this reason, I will probably choose to use short-answer, matching, and essay exams when possible. I think that these types of tests measure knowledge and understanding much more fully, and push students to fine tune their writing skills as well. One technique that is not mentioned in the book that I have recently had some experience with in the classroom is the use of on-demand writing prompts to gauge student understanding of literature. Today, in fact, I spent hours helping the teacher I am observing grade this type of test question, which was her way of assessing the students’ overall understanding of The Crucible. I read some excellent responses, some OK responses, and in some it was clear that the student had not done the reading. I think this method is particularly beneficial to students because it will help prepare them for CATS testing, and also because it forces them to communicate their knowledge of the topic in a holistic way. The downside is that I will have 150 responses to grade each test, and no guarantee that I will have any help from a college student!

Chapter 12: Enabling Writing

“It’s the head-to-page trip that is so frightening and difficult for writers. Acting as coaches of writing, teachers can assist students by helping them understand the strategies they are using and suggesting others they might use, by raising questions and more questions as the text emerges, and by encouraging and supporting student decision-making throughout the growth of the piece” (295). This quote included in the beginning of chapter 12 really resonated with me because I immediately connected it to my Teaching Adolescent Readers course and Jeffrey Wilhelm. It is our job as teachers to enable our students to write in a way that allows them to accurately express the thoughts and feelings they decide they want to communicate to others. The question, of course, is how can we do that in an individualized way when we have 30+ students in each class who may have different needs?
I love that the chapter is a practical guide to teaching all types of students at varying levels in their abilities to write effectively. The first activity that struck me is called “Coauthoring Activities” and describes several different ways to engage students in task-driven writing. I can see how this may interest un-motivated or struggling writers because there are many options for some activities that could be really fun. I would have no problem giving my students a list of 3 or 4 options on this list and having them choose which one appeals to them most. I think this would provide students the amount of creative freedom they would need to really get into an assignment. I know I always liked it when I had a choice, because I didn’t get many at that age.
I actually did an activity that would count as an example of this coauthoring at a practicum I completed for another class. I had two groups of students, both 12th grade; one class was comprehensive level, the other honors. I gave them both the same assignment, which was to satirize a social issue that they thought was important and share it with the whole class. The students were divided into groups of 3 or 4 and they had about 20 minutes to use newspapers, or their own thoughts, to come up with a short satire of issues like rising gas prices, teen pregnancy, etc. It turned out really well for most every group, and every group presented to the class. I have this student work in my files and I will always remember it as a great experience. This activity would act as a support for reading Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in my classroom, and would help them all to understand the convention of writing satire, which is a part of KY Core Content, and often on ACT/SAT exams as well.
I also love the section of this chapter that deals with journal writing because I think it is an essential part of a successful English classroom. In every English course that I ever loved we had to keep journals. I have kept those journals, and I hope to use them with my own students. The students can have purposeful writing that is geared toward the objectives for the day, as in a sponge activity or a reflection at the end of a lesson, or they can also use the journal for personal questions they have, reflection on what is going on in their life, etc. This gives the teacher a way to grade the students on participation and also to gain insight into their personal lives they may not choose to share in any other way. I like, too, that the chapter suggests confidentiality as a very important part of journal writing. If you don’t build that trust in students that you won’t share their writing with anyone else, they won’t be as free with their writing. As the chapter suggests: “If students know that we guarantee their right to privacy, they may feel an even greater sense of freedom and may risk writing about private thoughts and feelings. We are not trying to become confessors or counselors, but as educators, we might agree with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living and that self-knowledge is both curative and painful” (306).
Another strategy for enabling writing that I like is the idea of whole-class discussion. This isn’t always something that can be done at the beginning of the school year, necessarily, but after the building of community among the students and the modeling of the art of communication, students can often gain support, new ideas, and also constructive criticism from a whole-group discussion. I think it is a mark of maturity for students to be able to do this effectively, as well. I can easily assess how the students are making connections or not within their reading/writing if we discuss the writing, and also know where I need to make change in my instructional methods to help those students that don’t engage as easily.

Chapter 9: Assaying Nonfiction

Non-fiction brings a sense of real life to the students in one’s classroom, and also can create empathy, compassion, interest in historical events, etc. These things may never be attained otherwise, because at times students don’t easily connect with fiction because they can distance themselves from the text as it isn’t real. Bringing in non-fiction such as Holocaust literature, memoirs, diaries and journals, students can see how these types of writings can be done, thus springing them into a writing activity of this nature, possibly to include in the portfolio. Non-fiction can show students that everyday life is interesting and worthy of being written to share with others without the need for embellishment. I think the study of this genre helps to give students a sense of self-esteem, as well, because it says to them that you, as the teacher, think their true stories, feelings, actions, are worthwhile and important.
As I mentioned before, the teaching of non-fiction in a reading context can springboard the students into the writing of similar pieces, and it can also serve as an introduction to literary pieces as well. Reading a personal essay, for example, would allow students to study an example, to pick out the essential parts of the essay, and maybe even give the students ideas for writing their own personal essays. Similarly, the reading of a biography on someone like Maya Angelou, before reading Why the Caged Bird Sings is a great way to give students a sense of the writer and the history behind the novel (222).
One problem I see that may arise in the teaching of non-fiction is that students may have had negative, not so interesting experiences with it from past teachers, thus making them initially resistant to studying it at all. The cure, I believe, is the methods of instruction. If I know that my students are dreading non-fiction, I must take care to design highly participatory activities that draw them in, almost forcing them to think about the reading in an interesting way. Also, I must model my own behavior to students by showing genuine interest in the texts I choose to teach. If I do assignments along with the students, and read along with them, I can get a sense of what it is like to be them, and how to help them progress. The students will inevitably see this in me, and appreciate my effort to connect with them. Maybe not all of them, but some.
Creative approaches are key to engaging students in the study of non-fiction, as the book suggests (224). For example, activity 7-2 shows an exercise in comparison that I thought a bit more about. The activity suggests that comparing a non-fiction account of a person’s life and a fictional account would be fun and interesting for students. I agree, but if I frame the activity under the premise that the students are to be investigative journalists, searching for ways to compare and contrast the two pieces, and to find the “facts”, I could then have the next assignment be for the students to complete a write up on their findings, which could then be included in the portfolio. This is a way to incorporate the non-fiction and fiction into the writing requirements. I am sure I would have no problem finding KY Core Content to support this either.
Last, I really want to include the study of slave narratives in my classroom if at all possible. These are a piece of history that can rile students up, forcing them to form opinions on political issues, and to see outside themselves for once. Students at the middle and high school level are so self-centered and have a hard time thinking critically about anything that doesn’t directly affect them. I see a real need for them to step outside of themselves, however, and slave narratives can do that. There are many life lessons to be taught, and not enough hours in the day to teach them all explicitly, but if the students were to read Frederick Douglass’ narrative after they had a fight with their significant other or parents, perhaps they would feel lucky that they weren’t a slave being beaten for telling the truth. Stories such as these can make a person feel that maybe his/her own problems aren’t so bad anymore, you know?

Chapter 10: Compelling Writing

I was so glad to see this opening section, because it most definitely hits home with me as I think about how to develop my own teaching methods to adequately reach students that are not naturally inclined writers. My favorite sentence was: “This chapter introduces several foundational theories and strategies of writing instruction and teaching activities for helping students enter it, teaching activities that are more than exercises in which students take out paper and shake their hands around” (Bridging English 264). What follows is a method with which I agree; the students need to be given all the tools in order to reach the goals we all set for them, and that they set for themselves. If we don’t teach writing in stages, the students most likely will not reach their full potential.
The Developmental Tasks section provided some helpful insights into the process of thinking that goes into writing. I think it would be beneficial to post some of the things the chapter mentions in bold and italics in the classroom to help students differentiate between different types of writing. For example, if we were working on transactional writing, which we will be for the portfolio, it would be helpful, after a discussion, to post on the board, or on the wall: “language used to get things done, to inform, to advise or persuade or instruct people” (265).
The section on Writing Stages was illuminating for me in that it reminded me of the developmental nature of writing, and also of the necessity for an initial assessment of the writing ability of my students upon which to build the rest of my school year’s instruction. I must know where my students are before I can effectively design a curriculum that will help them grow and develop as writers. I hope to do this by creating a class website for my students and parents that they will be able to access before the school year begins. This will allow for increased parental involvement, but also for me to get some early feedback from students on their ability levels, their concerns, and their goals for the year.
I love the activities that follow, and I have seen some of them previously in books written by Lindemann and Romano, such as the “shell game.” The activity called “game plan” is such a wonderful idea as an exploration into the writing process; the students would have fun, I think, and would also be forced to consider the necessity for attention to precise detail in an explanation of the rules of a game. This writing could also be used in the portfolio, which is always a bonus!
I completely advocate spending time on teaching the process of writing, as I have said before, because students of all grade levels need the basic tools for the task before you expect them to use higher level thinking skills in a writing assignment. I plan to incorporate mini-lessons on grammar, prewriting, writing, rewriting, peer editing, publishing, and anything else that students express a need to be refreshed on both before and during the process of completing a writing assignment. I think that a whole unit on the writing of personal pieces, for example, can be supported by this type of instruction, and can give a much more well-rounded learning experience for students. And, they will need to know it for college, should they choose to pursue it after high school.
As far as assessment goes, using an authentic method of assessment is crucial. Students should know what to expect from the beginning of the assignment; you should be giving them a scoring guide early in the process so that they can guide their writing accordingly. The students should also be given a chance to revise writing in response to comments they may receive from both peers and teachers, if time allows of course. This process of revision is important for the growth of the students as writers; how can the progress if they have no chance to make changes to their writing to make it stronger? They can learn so much from this. This is one of the main problems I have with the KY Writing Portfolios. Students put a lot of hard work into their writing the pieces for the portfolio, but they only get a score at the end of it all, not a chance to look at their writing, see how it was scored, and note changes they would make in the future. It seems kind of like they are doing it for no reason at all, other than to be assessed by some board of reviewers somewhere. Sad.

I must say, I am not, nor have I ever been drawn to poetry the way I am drawn to literature. I have always had difficulty interpreting it, and must have had a negative experience with this as a young child, because to this day I dread it when I am given a passage to decipher. However, I do distinctly remember some of my English teachers making poetry fun,.making it come alive, and making me interested in it just by the way they taught. Chapter 5 does a nice job of reminding me that poetry can be fun, and I can enjoy teaching it to students who will most likely have the same reservations about it as I do.
I love the theme of Chapter 5, which I believe tells us as pre-service teachers that if we expect to get our students involved in the reading, writing, and deciphering of poetry, we must bring it to them in a way that interests them and doesn't go over their heads. I think that is one of the most difficult things about poetry; it seems like this huge, insurmountable masterpiece that we feel we can never fully grasp. Not so, not so. I appreciated the found poetry section of this chapter, which is something to which I was introduced by one of our classmates last year, Danna. She brought in an activity similar to the one in the book that I think will really work for high school students. I am a big advocate of using magazines and other media for found poetry, because it starts students out with something they are interested in and that they can choose. The activities on pages 133 and 134 are particularly of interest to me because I think they can be used cross-curriculum for social studies as well. For example, if I gave the students current newspapers and had them do activity 5-1 on page 135, the students would be able to read and understand the article, and also create poetry, covering their bases in English and Social Studies. This could even be refined for inclusion in the portfolio.
Reading on, I was so impressed with the way in which the authors of this text advocate the use of music in a unit on poetry. I think it is important to embrace the things in which students are interested, to validate those interests. By asking students to select appropriate musical lyrics to bring to class for discussion, you give them some ownership in creating the assignment in a way, thus making them feel included and also letting them know that you as a teacher are interested in them as people. I think this lends itself to strengthening the classroom community atmosphere, and increases student involvement.
I was also happy to have the list of feelings on page 145. This would be so useful in a lesson on poetry if I were to encounter students that are having trouble expressing themselves with their words, which I am sure will happen. It will be nice to have this list handy to make copies of and hand out to students.
This chapter does such a nice job of making sources available and giving examples of each concept. I haven't always had such good luck with textbooks designed for teacher education. So many texts I have been required to purchase seem to be written by people that haven't been in the classroom teaching for many years and base their information on studies done on select groups of students. This text is so much more practical than that; it quotes actual practicing teachers and gives evidence that the activities work.
Finally, I must say that I have been enlightened by reading this chapter. As one who doesn't LOVE poetry, it is nice to feel like I am excited about teaching it, and admitting to students that I have a history of having difficulty with reading and writing it. Hopefully, together we can revive poetry in our classroom and create something new and fantastic. I would like to try some of these activities out in my student teaching, if the curriculum allows for it of course.