Book Talk #2

Daisy Kutter: The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi

Chapter 15 - When Kids Can't Read

"I know that year you questioned why you struggled so with reading. The question you never voiced, though, was why no one seemed to be able to help you. But I heard the unasked question. George, and other teachers throughout this nation teaching other students like you heard it as well. Now, more than ever before, teachers ask, - demand - to know what to do when kids can't read. ... We must, at all times, remember that we don't teach a subject, we teach you - specific children with specific needs. " Page 300

In college, we pick a specific subject we want to teach. We must know so much about that subject but are we teaching the same thing to every student? I really liked the comment Beers says about teaching a specific need to specific students. It is a nice way to tie everything in the book together. She has given us so many different options, techniques and strategies to help our students read. But every student will not need every strategy. As a teacher, we must tailor ourselves to meet the needs of our students.

Book Talk #1

Baseball in April by Gary Soto


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jviKNiGaAOw

Chapter 13 - When Kids Can't Read

"Ask your students who struggle, really struggle, with reading what they think the problem is. Some will quickly dismiss the question, but others might say, "The book is too hard"; others will respond, "I'm too dumb"; a rare few will just explain, "I just need to try harder." Guess which ones will be easiest to reconnected to reading? ... The ones that think the problem can be overcome if they just try harder." Page 261

I think this has become a big problem in schools today. Teachers set their expectations low for struggling students and dumb down the curriculum so that they are able to pass it. Teachers are not pushing their students to succeed. I know that some of the best teachers I have had in my life have always pushed me to do better or pushed me to do things that I didn't think I could do. They had high expectations for me. They didn't dumb down the curriculum for me. They helped me work through it and gave me the support I needed.

Chapter 12 - 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. At their earliest stage, children lack any awareness of letter-sound relationships; at the most advanced stage, children manipulate Latin and Greek prefixes, suffixes, and roots to spell words correctly." Page 246

I am a horrible speller and I blame my teachers in elementary school for that. I do! I was taught to spell by sounding it out and then spelling it like it sounds. So, I would spell it like it sounded, most of the time it was wrong, but my teachers wouldn't correct my spelling. I just kept spelling these words I had sounded out wrong, until we started having spelling tests.

There are so many ways to teach spelling and how to help students with their spelling in this chapter. I really liked the list of suggestions for improving spelling and the chart of spelling demons. I know adults that struggle with these words and we want our students to spell these words perfectly, when they are hard for everybody.

Chapter 11 - When Kids Can't Read

"Suggestion #5: Teach Chunking. Chunking a word means dividing long words into more manageable chunks... Sometimes those chunks are syllables; often they are smaller words or prefixes and suffixes that we hope students recognize. It helps many readers work through long words." Page 235

I remember learning large words like this. I had forgot about that until I read this section. My teacher called in dividing. She told us that we don't remember phone numbers as one group of numbers, like 1244324321. We divide them up , like 124-432-4321. So why can't we do the same with words? She had us take off prefixes and suffixes and find the word then add them back on. It made long words a lot less intimidating for me.

Chapter 10 - When Kids Can't Read

"Students in classrooms that provide big blocks of time for sustained silent reading, as well as students from home environments that encourage home reading, show more gains in reading rate than students who do little reading at school or home." Page 208-209

In my field placement class, they use a computer program called Read Naturally and the have sustained silent reading. This program uses teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring to maximize reading proficiency. The students pick a story, read the main vocabulary, make a prediction about the story, the read cold timed, then they follow along as the story is read to them, read the story out loud, and answer questions about the story.

I noticed a big difference in the students fluency in the two schools I am at this semester. At the school that uses Read Naturally, the students read smoothly and they change their voices for questions and dialogue. At the other school, I noticed that the students tend to read each word in the sentence and do not run them together to make a sentence.

This is a perfect example of what Kylene Beers says. When students have the opportunity to read and improve their fluency, it will improve.

Chapter 9 - When Kids Can't Read

"Suggestion #3: Teach Word Parts. Teaching some words directly via word lists and teaching students how to find the meaning of other words indirectly via the context are both important. However, we can't directly teach the meaning of all words, and sometimes the context just leaves students clueless; therefore, we must also help readers increase their word knowledge by teaching them how words work." Page 188

I am working with a student on this very thing in my field placement. I am reading a novel with her that was written in 1959 and it is full of words we don't use very much in everyday talk anymore. I ask her what she thinks the words mean based on the context and sometimes she gets it right and sometimes she doesn't. Also, she struggles with word solving, so I have taught her some strategies to help her learn how different clusters of words fit together to make a word.

Chapter 8 - When Kids Can't Read

"Summarizing a short story or a novel appears to be too overwhelming for many students, who either offer nothing or restate everything in the story. Somebody Wanted But So , offers students a framework as they create their summaries." Page 145

My field placement teacher uses a strategy that is close to this and her students use it very well. They use this strategy in groups in reading class, but they also use it in social studies after reading a chapter. Sometimes they read a chapter and they can't remember the main ideas. They do the SWBS chart at the end of the chapter as a review and it helps them not only remember the chapter, but also they learn to summarize.

ALAN Book Chat

I really liked getting to speak with Dwight McPherson. It was very interesting to hear his responses to our questions. He gave some answers that I wasn't expecting. I liked the format of the chat. It would have been better if it was more organized, but it still turned out OK. Overall, I think the chat went well. It went by really fast! I learned things about the book and the author that I would not have learned anywhere else. I hope I can use something like this in my future classroom.

Chapter 7 - When Kids Can't Read

"... We make a case for encouraging students to talk about what they have read. Bulding on that premise that classroom literature is important, I'd like to suggest that it is more critical for dependent readers to talk about texts during the reading experiences than after it." Page 104

I don't think teachers encourage students to talk about what they read as much as they need to. I know when I was in school, I read the assigned reading and took a quiz or a test over it. The next day I would repeat the same thing until the book was finished. We did the same thing over and over. I wish my teacher would have asked me what I think of the reading while I was reading it. I think it would have helped me better understand and be a better reader. Teachers should have in class reading and encourage students to talk about the book. It could be in literature circles, groups, pairs, or one-on-one with a teacher. Just as long as they are talking about the book.

Chapter 6 -When Kids Can't Read

"Dependent readers often struggle because they don't predict what the section might be about... Probable Passage helps stops passive reading habits." Page 87

I liked the idea of of the Probable Passage worksheet. I think it is a simple way to have students find all the main points of a story. It is easier to write and read then a paper or a book report. It was helpful to have the Step Inside the Classroom section also. It was interesting to read what students were thinking about the worksheet. They had a wide variety of responses, some were right on target, while others struggled. This is a valuable tool for readers who don't activate their prior knowledge or visualize what they read.

Chapter 5 - When Kids Can't Read

"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 popcorn." Page 64

This passage is an example of types of inferences that can be made based on a few simple sentences. This section of the book provides 10 examples that we can infer. I think this basic strategy can be a helpful tool when we are trying to help our students understand the deeper meaning in their reading. This chapter was full of helpful information about infrencing.

I would write up a small paragraph similar to the one mentioned above. There are no names or specific information. They have to use their our knowledge to understand the passage. I would pass it out and ask the students 'What's going on in this passage? How do you know? What information is there to help you come to this conclusion?'

Chapter 4- When Kids Can't Read

I love the idea of a Think Aloud! It is such a basic idea but it can be very helpful for struggling readers. A good readers, we understand what is going on in our minds and we can process that information, but some students have trouble with this process.

"I constantly remind my undergraduate students that education is not a Nike commercial: you can't say,” Just Do It'. Instead, we must show students HOW to do it. That means we have to be very direct and explicit in strategy instruction." Page 41

We must model and be direct in our instruction. Our students can’t read our minds, we must help them and show them the correct way to visualize, compare and contrast and predict, among many others, in their heads.

Chapter 3 - When Kids Can't Read

"While I still catch myself saying, 'This kid can't read,' I now clarify what that means. Not being able to read can mean a range of things, depending on the student's strengths and weaknesses." Page 24

We have always said this kid has trouble reading or this kid doesn't understand, but what does that mean? The list she mentions gives you an opportunity to explore many possibilities in order to find the problem. It give you a good jumping off point. Does the students struggle with sight words and vocabulary? Or is the problem recalling information from the text? We can't be teachers and say this student can't read. We have to be the ones to find the problem and fix it the best we can.

Chapter 2 - When Kids Can't Read

"Cognitive Confidence allows students to comprehend texts, monitor their understanding, determine meaning of words, and read with fluency. Social and Emotional Confidence allows students to be willing and active participants in a community of readers, read for enjoyment and information, and have a positive attitude toward reading and other readers. Text Confidence allows readers to develop the stamina to continue reading difficult texts and find authors and genres that interest them" Page 18

I noticed the chart over the Confidences Readers Need. This chart seems to go hand in hand with my field experience. Today in our class, the students were working on fluency and building their reading stamina. They use a program on the computer that reads the story to them, then they must read it out loud. They are tested on questions about reading passage, their expression as they read and words they miss while reading out loud.

One student was ready to test so I listened to him read his passage. He is a very fast reader and he didn't hardly make a mistake so I know he has Text Confidence. We went back and reviewed his questions about the passage and he has trouble recalling information from the passage. He flew through his reading and did not allow the information to make it to his brain. I know now that he struggles with Cognitive Confidence.

So, we went back to the passage and I told him to slow down and don't worry about the timer, just read it again. It was a huge difference than the first reading! We went back to his questions again and this time he could answer them.

Literature Circle Response – Oddly Normal

First off, I loved this book! I think it’s a good book for struggling readers and normal readers. It is entertaining and a really excellent story. I think this is a great book to use in literature circles because there is so much to discuss, from the plot, characters and illustrations. I think we can all relate to Oddly in our own way.

This was a really good experience for me. I have never read a graphic novel before and I have only participated in a few literature circles. So this was good practice! I enjoyed discussing the book with other members of the circle. Everybody had their own opinions, some liked it some hated it. I really wish I could have done literature circles when I was in middle school and high school. It helped me understand the book better. Others would bring up parts that I overlooked or details I had missed. It gives you a much better sense of the book.

Chapters 2 and 3 in Building a Knowledge Base in Reading

Chapters 2 and 3 both had so much valuable information in them. These are the things that stuck out to me the most.

“Langer identified classroom practices for adolescents that parallel Cambourne’s conditions for young adolescent readers:
1. Teachers treat all students as capable envisionment builders with important understandings and potential classroom contributions to classroom discussions.
2. Teachers assume that questions are a natural part of the process of understanding new material. Rather than an indication of failure to learn, and that questions provide productive starting points for a discussion.” (Page 27)

I thought these two were the most powerful of the four classroom practices. I think students are a lot smarter than their teachers give them credit for. I think they should have the opportunity to engage in higher level discussion. Some might participate or not, but at least they have can be potential classroom contributors. I can remember in school when any student had a question; we had to save it until the teacher was finished with the lecture. By the time she was finished, we had forgot the question. I think all teachers should welcome any questions from students at ANY time during a lesson. If that student has a question, more than likely other students will have the same question.

When Kids Can't Read - Chapter 14

"Thinking back, I realize that that was how I tried to connect student to reading: book by book. We'd try one, and if that didn’t work, we’d try another.” (Page 282)

I love how this section goes over exactly what we went over in class. We need to find that “homerun book”. If we strike out with a book, we need to throw them another book and try again.

The suggestions about fiction and non-fiction were very helpful. Since I enjoy reading I never thought about the length of chapters, illustrations, or white space in the book. These helped me look at books more carefully and look at them from a middle school student’s perspective, rather than an adult.

Connecting Students to Culturally Relevant Texts

“The books Francisco chose are ones that he connects with, books that draw on his background and culture. Though this extensive reading, Francisco developed the academic English proficiency he needed”

It is so important to find culturally diverse books for our students to read. They might be interested in a book that takes place 50 years ago with a older protagonist, but give the student a modern book that they can relate to and they will enjoy reading it.

“When teachers use culturally relevant books, students understand the books more fully, and, as a result, become more engaged in their reading.”

Teachers need to provide books that are culturally relevant to African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and also Caucasians students. I believe it is also important to provide books that take place in their own state. I remember reading a short story about a boy who lived in Texas. I could relate to that story. It made references to the state flag, armadillos, and tumbleweeds. I understood the story better because I had those same things where I live.

When Kids Can't Read - Chapter One

“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 grown up in an alliterate environment and become the next generation of struggling readers whose teachers might chant: “These kids can’t read.” (Page 7)


This chapter helped remind me that the first year of teaching will be nothing that I expect. It won’t be candy coated and sprinkled with glitter, it will be hard. We never know what to expect. I really enjoyed the first chapter. It was nice to read about her experience with George during her first year of teaching. The passage above really stood out for me. It is our job to make sure we are the teacher that corrects a student’s reading problems and we shouldn’t leave it up to somebody else. We are all reading teachers regardless of our subject area.

Literature Circles

"In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The discussion is guided by students' response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story. Literature circles provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books."

Literature Circles Resource Center
http://www.litcircles.org/Overview/overview.html


This section of the website really helped me better understand what a literature circle is. I had never heard of a literature circle before this class. Now that I am familiar with them, I think they are a very powerful tool. Literature Circles are reader response centered. The students are giving their own opinions over the material to their own group, not to the entire class. I think having the students choose what they want to read out of a list of books make it more interesting for them. They are not being forced to read something they don’t want to. They will be more willing to participate and be engaged in the discussion if they are interested in the material.

I wish we had done something like this when I was in school. My teachers would assign reading material and we would discuss it as an entire class. That intimidated me and most my classmates, so only a few students would participate. Had the discussion been broken down into groups, I would have been more likely to give my response to the material.