Customer Reviews

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

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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 !!!

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!

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!

We secondary (Grades 7-12) English teachers have a weakness and it's called reading. Oh, we're GREAT readers and love literature and know how to teach it (to avid and average readers). But throw a kid at us who struggles with reading (and we get them every year) and they're likely to fall through the cracks, because our solutions are rather simplistic. We say things like, "Read it again," or "Sound the word out," or "Look the word up." When they hesitate before a strange word while reading aloud, we give them the word. When they don't do the reading assignment, we watch them flunk our quizzes and wonder why they are so lazy.

Enter Kylene Beers, with easily the best book I've read on the subject of struggling readers who are NOT of elementary age, but of middle and high school age. Yes, elementary teachers have reading specialists to fall back on, but in secondary schools, it is often either the English teacher who must intervene or no one. For Beers, the inspiration for writing this book was the number of former students she had who were condemned to "or no one" because she simply did not know what to do. For me (and probably legions of other teachers) her story will sound chillingly familiar. Fortunately, WHEN KIDS CAN'T READ: WHAT TEACHERS CAN DO is the antidote to our problems.

In this book, Beers identifies the myriad of types of students who struggle with reading, and why. She provides practical strategies on how to intervene if your students struggle with comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and word recognition/fluency/automaticity. There's also advice on how to help kids in responding to literature, as well as how to help them find a book that will tap into their interests.

Each chapter includes an introduction and thorough definition of the problem, a section called "Step Inside a Classroom" which details real-life transcripts of kids having this exact reading difficulty, and a list of various strategies you can try -- even if it means having different groups with scaffolding activities within your language arts classroom. At the end of the book are appendices that include such helpful reproducibles as bookmark templates, common roots/prefixes/and suffixes, Fry and Dolch word lists, common phonics generalizations, 175 most common syllables in the 5,000 most frequent English words, word sorts, easily confused words, common spelling rules, and booklists for every type of reader. Can you say goldmine? This is the end of the rainbow, folks.

I can't recommend this book enough to my fellow 7-12 English teachers. Reach out to your weak readers. Don't condemn them to a life of mediocrity (or worse) in literacy by assuming either it's their problem or they are beyond help. It's not and they aren't. Buy this book and put it to good use. This is where theory meets the road (called "practicality"). Be not only an English teacher, but a READING teacher (in every sense of the word).

I'm a Title 1 teacher in Oregon, and I work with the types of readers that Kylene Beers talks about in her book "When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do". I found her book to be loaded with practical, "use in your classroom the next day" ideas that are easy to implement.

Now, my school is an elementary school, and initially I avoided this book due to the "Guide for Teachers 6-12" label on it. Boy, was I wrong. While the focus of her book is for middle and high school teachers, most of her techniques are excellent techniques for the younger learners as well, especially the fifth grade students that I'm working with. She has taken many of the concepts we use in elementary school and upgraded them for older kids; but good teaching is good teaching, no matter what you are trying to do.

This book is so practical, on the inside front cover, you are given a simple chart that list reading problems that kids have, and the chapter that you can immediately turn to in order to get ideas! It can't get any friendlier than that.

However, I also suggest a more thorough read through of this content. Beers talks throughout the book of a student named George that she taught early in her career, before she knew much about teaching. Sprinkled through the text, before and after each chapter, write writes lovingly to George about how she failed him time and time again, in direct relation to the content of the chapter. As a teacher, looking back on my own career, I can totally relate to that. If I knew then what I know now... the letters become Beers "mea culpa", and they are a beautiful addition to the text.

I highly recommend this book for ANY teacher struggling to teach struggling readers reading. It's practical, easy to use, and loaded with great ideas.

I am a teacher of 5th - 8th grade students who are "dependant" readers. This book offers very well researched methods for instruction that allow teachers to reach and teach their own dependant readers. The writing is clear and respectful to both the reader and their students. The ideas are backed by theory but once read can be implemented the next day. I have seen some of the ideas in practice with the teachers I work with and the students are *really* starting to get meaning from the text.

This is a great book for ESL teachers, new teachers and even seasoned teachers that need to help their kids think higher level and need help with comprehension. I have enjoyed everything in it!!! I am not finished but I am already implementing many of the ideas for comprehension. This purchase has been the best money I have spent in a long time!

When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers has been inspirational and life-changing for teachers in our district. As Language Arts Instructional Specialist, working closely with the Middle Level Coordinator for a large school district, we are constantly seeking methods and materials that will enhance reading instruction and advance literacy. When Kids Can't Read provides hands-on strategies for improved reading instruction that our teachers embrace and implement immediately in their classrooms. Teachers in our district have used this book as the focus of professional literary circles, as a guide in reading classes for reluctant readers, and as the foundation to improved reading instruction across the curriculum. I have read this book cover to cover; it is an essential book for all educators striving to make a difference one struggling reader at a time.

This book has a lot of ideas to help teachers of middle school and high school. It contains examples of many strategies for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

If you are stuck on a particular student and can't figure out what to do to help them, read this book and find help.

This book is also good for content area teachers who need help with their struggling readers.

Excellent book - a must have! Writer is knowledgeable of real live classroom situations. A plus is the book does not need to be read cover to cover, but you will want to after you start. Excellent resource for middle and high school teachers.