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

Kylene Beers (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0867095199 | ISBN-13: 978-0867095197 | Publication Date: October 28, 2002

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. Others couldn't even pronounce the words. And that was the year she met a boy named George.

George couldn't read. When George's parents asked her to explain what their son's reading difficulties were and what she was going to do to help, Kylene, a secondary certified English teacher with no background in reading, realized she had little to offer the parents, even less to offer their son. That defining moment sent her on a twenty-three-year search for answers to that original question: how do we help middle and high schoolers who can't read?

Now in her critical and practical text When Kids Can't Read - What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12, Kylene shares what she has learned and shows teachers how to help struggling readers with

• comprehension
• vocabulary
• fluency
• word recognition
• motivation

Here, Kylene offers teachers the comprehensive handbook they've needed to help readers improve their skills, their attitudes, and their confidence. Filled with student transcripts, detailed strategies, reproducible material, and extensive booklists, this much-anticipated guide to teaching reading both instructs and inspires.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

About the Author

Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do (Heinemann, 2002), is interested in helping struggling readers. 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 conventions and works with teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the US. You can follow Kylene on Twitter or Facebook or her blog at KyleneBeers.com. She is completing a new book, co-authored with Bob Probst, titled Book-by-Book: Lessons for Unlocking Literature which will be published by Heinemann in 2011.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (October 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0867095199
• ISBN-13: 978-0867095197
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kylene Beers, a former middle school teacher, is the author of When Kids Can't Read - What Teachers Can Do (Heinemann, 2002) and coeditor - with Robert Probst and Linda Rief - of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice (Heinemann, 2007). A respected authority on struggling readers who works with elementary, middle school, and high school teachers across the nation, Kylene served as the 2008-2009 President of the National Council of Teachers of English and is the 2011 recipient of the Conference on English Leadership Exemplary Leader Award. You can follow Kylene on Twitter or Facebook or her blog at KyleneBeers.com. To have Kylene speak in your school or at a conference, contact speakers at www.Heinemann.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a winner! Every MS and HS teachers needs to read it, December 18, 2002

By 

R. ebook Writing G. Hedrick "byte me with an ... (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 (Paperback)

Passion. Voice. Soul. Reality. This book has all of this and more. It has substance. I wish I had been given this book when i was teaching Middle School and High School. I wish I had known then what I have now learned, now that I am a retired teacher after 37 years of teaching.

This is a book that makes sense in all its many pages, as to what teachers can and ought to do, WHEN KIDS CAN'T READ. I loved the idea that 'it's okay to reread a book!' duh. (Why didn't I think of that?) I loved 'think alouds'. I loved 'say something'. I loved all the methods given because I know they work--she presents the word for word classroom dialogue to show how they work.

Here is a book that reaches out and touches you, no, more, it reaches out and grabs you by the eyeballs to look, to look again; to read, and read again; to model the methods and model them again.

Am I being paid for this to say this? No! Do I even know Kylene Beers? no. Do I love this book and think it is a savior to poor adolescent readers everywhere? A resounding YES !!!

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a book to drive a retired teacher back into teaching, December 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 (Paperback)

This isn't just revolutionary; it's revelationary. This is a book to make any teacher who has ever taught from 6 th grade on up have hope once more. It arms you with weapons of mass instruction, specific mass instruction. It brings a reader to the land of read and reread, much as the writing project brought the writer into the land of rewrite. So many techniques, so many strategies, so many ok methods that beguile the mind and break the heart of the retired teacher: 'where were you when I needed you'??????

One of the reasons I floated slowly downward in the grade levels the longer I taught was the diversity of reading levels. Had I known that it's okay to reread, to real aloud, to think aloud, to say something aloud about what you are reading, I might still be teaching.

Kylene's book is full of devotion and passion and subtle but strong excitement: there is hope for the adolescent reader, the dependent reader, the below grade level reader. There is hope.

Read Kylene's book and share the hope!

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do, June 26, 2004

By 

Lisa Omark (Woodbridge, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 (Paperback)

One day, while at a bookstore, I was looking for a resource book that could help me with our strugging sixth, seventh, and eighth grade readers. In my hands, I held two books and planned to buy one. One book was "When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do" written by Kylene Beers. I honestly don't remember the name of the other book for, I as looked through the two, it was clear which would be the more useful. I bought Kylene's book and have never looked back! Kylene explains a variety of reading strategies to help readers make meaning of text before they read, as they read, and after they read. Her ideas on vocabulary instruction are some of the most useful I have ever encountered. Kylene addresses how struggling readers also have difficulty with spelling and gives us concrete suggestions to help our readers improve their spelling skills. "Sound it out" does not often work for the struggling reader; a chapter on word recognition is very helpul. Most importantly, Kylene addresses the need for us to create confidence in our struggling readers and she offers suggestions as to how teachers can do this. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do is one of the best resources I have found in my thirty years of teaching. I have used this book daily and our students are the beneficiaries. They are becoming life-long readers!