Kylene Beers Responses

10/4/15
Chapters 1 and 2
I really liked these first two chapters in the book because she
gave an example of a bad experience she had during the parent
teacher conference with George's parents and talked about how that
experience really shaped her to do better and find out more about the
issues of struggling readers. Struggling readers come in all shapes and
sizes and she offers two things she has found out over the years. First,
there is no single concrete answer to why students struggle with
reading. Second, while there is no single answer, there are answers. It
is the teachers job to try and come up with a course of action to solve
the problem of struggling readers. Also, every reader can struggle
depending on the text. It is what the reader does with this challenging
text that defines what kind of reader they are. A struggling reader will
most likely give up, while a non-struggling reader will push through and
try to figure out what the text is trying to say. Beers offers some great
knowledge and insight to struggling readers and I am excited to see
what she has to say in the rest of her book.
10/7/15
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 gives multiple examples of students who struggle with
various aspects of reading and also some strategies to address these. I
really like figure 3.2 that talks about the different struggles readers
have at the top of the chart and then what the student needs helps
with it at the bottom. This makes it easy to take something you see in
your student and then quickly see what they need help with. In
addition to these tips, it is important to teach your students that
reading is active and it requires their engagement. Teaching reading
strategies is also important although it make take time away from
content. In order for students to become better readers they need to
know skills in order to improve.
10/19/15
Chapter 5 and 6
Chapters 5 and 6 in the Beers reading addresses something that
everyone does, making inferences, and some effective pre-reading
strategies. An inference is defined as the ability to connect what is in
the text with what is in the mind to create an educated guess. It is

important to teach your students how to make accurate inferences

because it is something that we all do. This strategy is an example of
higher-level thinking because you are connecting what you read to
what you are thinking in your mind to come up with some sort of
educated guess as to what is going on in the passage. Chapter 6
presents us with some pre-reading strategies that I think are very
important. One strategy I have experience with is the K-W-L strategy.
The acronym stands for what I know, what I want to learn, and what I
learned. This provides a framework to helps students think about a
topic before they read about it. It is effective because it gets students
thinking about what they already know and what they want to find out
more about. Then after the reading, they will explore what they
learned. This strategy mixes pre-reading thinking with reflection at the
end.
10/25/15
Chapters 7 and 8
Beers chapters seven and eight talks about effective during
reading and after reading strategies to really get students thinking and
reflecting on what theyre reading. One thing Beers discusses in
chapter seven I really liked what just the reminder to focus
conversation not only on plot but things like predictions or connections.
This may seem like a small tip but I think sometimes teachers forget
just how important this higher-level thinking is. She addresses a
common strategy of rereading which seems simple but there are some
important aspects to it. When thinking about the rereading strategy it
is important to prove that rereading is valuable, model your thinking as
you reread, give students specific tasks, and finally review what
happened. All of these steps are very important to a deeper
understanding of the text. After reading strategies are crucial to both
your students and you as a teacher. Students need to reflect on what
they read and the teacher needs to monitor their responses to see the
depth of the understanding. One strategy I thought was very
interesting that chapter eight discussed was the most important word
strategy. After reading a text, tell the students to pick what they
thought was the most important word. This encourages students to
really think about the overall meaning of the text and choose what
word was the most important aspect of that text.
11/1/15
Chapters 9 and 10

When reflecting on chapters 9 and 10 in Beers, it was very

encouraging to see how much I already knew about vocabulary. We
have done a lot of work on vocab over the past two years and it was
very cool to see some of the strategies and knowledge I have learned
talked about in this book. One strategy I really like from chapter 9 is
teaching word parts. Many words in the english language are made up
of certain roots or parts that have a set meaning. If students can
understand these common meanings, a lot of times the student can
put together the meaning from previous knowledge. Chapter 10
addresses fluency and automaticity. Similar to what I talked about
above, one strategy to improve fluency is to improve the students'
knowledge of high-frequency words and sight words. There are many
words that are used frequently in the language so understanding these
words is crucial. The knowledge of sight words and high-frequency
words can greatly improve the reading fluency of your students.
11/9/15
Chapters 11 and 12
Chapter 11 deals with an issue that I think a lot of teachers face.
When students aren't able to pronounce a word they are most likely
just going to say "sound it out." The most effective way to eliminate
this issue is to help your students build a common vocabulary. There
are so many strategies and types of words you can teach to help
eliminate the problem of pronunciation. For example, high-frequency
and sight words are important to know because they come up so often.
Another suggestion I like is suggestion #9: Teach prefixes, suffixes, and
root words. Tons of words are made up of these three things so if they
can understand common prefixes, suffixes, and root words they should
know how to pronounce a lot of words. Chapter 12 talks about spelling,
something even adults still have trouble with. There are five stages of
spelling development and they are: emergent, letter name, within-word
pattern, syllable juncture, and derivational constancy. These stages
build off of each other and as a teacher if a student is struggling with
spelling, it is important to be able to identify which stage he or she is
struggling with.
11/15/15
Chapters 13 and 14
I am really glad that Kylene Beers talked about creating the
confidence to respond in chapter 14 because this is something that
every kid goes through. I know that still to this day I catch myself being
nervous to respond to a question in class because I am afraid to get it

wrong. I know I am not the only one who feels this way so if college
students still struggle with this sometimes, you can imagine it is way
worse in middle school. Beers gives a lot of good tips on how to create
an environment where kids feel free to say what they think. I think
specifically in middle school it is important to celebrate the diversity in
your class. Kids know when they are different from the "typical" or
"popular" kids and this can get them discouraged. Making them feel
welcome is key to building the confidence to respond. Chapter 15 talks
about choosing the right book, which is crucial in leading to success.
One tip she gives is something I never really thought about but that
can be very effective. The read and tease tip eases a student into a
book he or she wouldn't otherwise have read. By telling students about
books or even reading parts to them, students can tell if that is
something they might want to read. This strategy will encourage your
kids to check out the great books they have available.

11/23/15
Chapter 15 to the end
The ending of this book has many great resources that are
extremely valuable to teachers. The final chapter in the book is a letter
to George, the student who inspired Kylene Beers to really want to find
out more about the struggling reader. George obviously had a huge
impact on her life and I wonder if he knows that. She has one quote in
this chapter that stuck with me and it is, "We must, at all times,
remember that we don't teach a subject, we teach you--specific
children with specific needs." I think this is a great quote because a lot
of teachers get caught up with their material and get stuck with
teaching to the standardized tests at the end of the year. Teaching is
not about getting through the material, but rather coming up with a
plan for every student in order to work on fixing his or her weaknesses.
The biggest reason why I changed my major to Education was the
chance to have an impact and make a difference. By creating
relationships with your students and working on their needs, you are in
fact making a difference. The final parts of the book are very helpful
templates, which go with things she talked about throughout the book.
One thing I really like, which I think all students should use is the
bookmarks she provides. As students are reading they can write down
questions from specific pages in the book. This exercise will lead the
students to read more carefully and have a greater understanding on
what they're reading.