Final Reflection

I absolutely loved our Teaching Reading with Literature course. I learned so many valuable things that I will use to guide my future practice. I will definitely keep our textbook as a future reference. Beers filled this book with numerous suggestions/strategies to use with struggling readers which will be especially beneficial as a future intervention specialist who will be working with struggling readers on the regular. I have already used several of these strategies in my field experience, and they truly are helpful. I have already bookmarked pages with strategies that I found especially useful. It will also be great having our blog posts as a reference to flip back to. Beers is specific and detailed, all while making her textbook enjoyable to read. This will definitely be one textbook I add to my library.

I also love all the rich young adult literature we encountered in this course. I literally have a list of at least 20 books I am asking for as a Christmas gift. I really enjoyed our book review assignments with different types of novels. It was interesting doing an author study, also. I love how Dr. Pytash gave us choice in our assignments, as I think this is critical to our young developing readers also. Throughout the course I learned many vital things I will transfer into my future practice. I recommend this course to any student looking to pursue a career in the education department.

Chapter 14: Finding the Right Book

Beers discusses the importance of book selection and offers several great suggestions to encourage reluctant readers to read in chapter 14. She begins with an important point: As teachers we cannot use ourselves as guides for what makes a good book for our students. It is important to determine the features that they want to see in a book. She did this by asking reluctant readers what they like to see in a book if they absolutely have to read one. Many responses to this question will be irrelevant; however, some responses may help determine crucial features for the perfect text for your students.

The number one suggestion Beers provides us to motivate reluctant readers, in my opinion, is getting to know your readers interests. As a teacher, it is paramount that you take the time to get to know your students. By doing so, you will have infinite opportunities to adapt lessons to better suit their interests, including the books they read. I also love the idea of book talks/reading as a tease. After every class we have had this year, I always have a new book I want to read because Dr. Pytash has given us a preview of a book---generally at a pretty juicy part. This is an excellent idea to get readers excited. Booktalks are always a great tool too. I find myself continuously doing this with my friends about books that we have recently read. Both of these suggestions are vital to encourage students to read.

This chapter also has several great resources for finding appropriate books for ourselves and our students. I really enjoyed reading this chapter because I believe it is paramount that we learn how to find the right book so we can enjoy reading. We (teachers) have to make reading enjoyable for students so they want to read and ultimately become successful readers.

           

Chapter 13: Creating the Confidence to Respond

I loved that this strategy wasn’t about your everyday reading strategy/skills. Often times we forget about the social/emotional aspect of learning and look solely at cognitive ability. Beers states, “So, the foundation for success is in improving their comprehension, vocabulary, and/or word recognition skills. What follows are additional suggestions that help students develop social and emotional confidence as readers.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Even sometimes today, as a fourth year college student, I am hesitant to respond in class because I am afraid I may sound stupid. How silly! It is paramount that we consider this aspect of learning, particularly with our adolescence readers who are very concerned with fitting in with the ‘in’ crowd.

Beers gives us several suggestions on how to build confidence in the classroom. One of her suggestions, which I believe is wonderful, is to create a classroom that encourages risk. This requires more effort on the teacher’s behalf, but it is vital to our students confidence that we are not “dumbing down” the work. The success of the students in her example (with Moby Dick) was tied to the work the teacher was willing to do in providing the necessary scaffolds for the students.

Another suggestion that I believe is vital to any successful classroom is to celebrate the diversity found within. It’s often hard for teenagers to embrace differences. If you create an environment that celebrates differences and one in which all students feel equal and comfortable, then they students will have more confidence to participate. I went to a very diverse high school and am so appreciative for that experience that I believe this is an important part of education.

Beers has many other wonderful suggestions, but I must comment on her example of the “ding-a-ling” idea to reduce put-downs. I absolutely love this idea, and would love to try it in a classroom one day. The sound of the bell would be annoying enough for me to keep my comments to myself. However, I am a little concerned this would be very distracting to the classroom. I am curious to see how it would work.

Finally, the last idea that I would like to comment on is efferent vs. aesthetic reading stances. Readers might take an efferent stance toward reading when their goal is to carry information from the text. Readers may take a more aesthetic stance when the goal is to live through the text. It is important to note that most struggling readers take an efferent stance toward reading. It is our goal to move them toward a more aesthetic reading stance. We have to encourage students to bring the text closer, let the ideas and issues, conflicts and contests, triumphs and tragedies become a part of who they are. Once students are able to do this, they will probably enjoy reading much more. This also brings me to the idea of sustained silent reading, where students are able to choice read. If students are able to pick out a text that is right for them, they will be more apt to read aesthetically, rather than with an efferent stance.  

Chapter 10: Fluency and Automaticity

In Chapter 10, Beers discusses the importance of fluency and automaticity in reading and offers suggestions on how to increase these skills in struggling readers. Automaticity is that ability to do something quickly without a lot of conscious thinking about the task. Reading, for most of us is an example. Same with driving, we do not have to think too much about how to drive when we need to go to the grocery store. Reading automaticity refers to a reader’s ability to recognize words without conscious decoding. It means that when we read, we recognize words as entire units, and we recognize words quickly and accurately. Students don’t develop automaticity through decoding, but rather by repeated exposure to a word they are already able to decode. I find it interesting that because I am a fluent reader, and have been reading for so many years, I struggle with decoding. I am having an awful difficult time in my phonics course, trying to learn how to teach the basics of reading.  

Automaticity leads to fluency---the ability to read smoothly and easily at a good pace with good phrasing and expression. Fluency develops over time as students word recognition skills improve. Beers provides us with two ways to measure fluency in our students on pages 209-211. Beers also gives us several suggestions to use in a classroom to help improve our reader’s fluency. Her first suggestion is to use sight words. The Dolch Basic Sight Vocabulary contains 220 words that are high-frequency. My cooperating field experience used this with her struggling readers and it really seemed to help. Another suggestion to increase fluency is to ensure that students are hearing text. This can be done by reading to your students, echo reading, choral reading, etc. Students need to hear fluent reading in order to become fluent readers. Aside from many other suggestions Beers provides, one that I find interesting is to prompt students, and not correct them. I absolutely agree with this suggestion, but believe it is easier said than done. It is so easier to just tell a student what the word they are struggling on is instead of providing them with a prompt to decode it. Every since I was in school, I can remember teachers simply telling me or my peers what a word is if we were stumbling on it. I will remember this when working with my struggling readers in the future.

Finally, we can’t stress enough that nonfluent readers are most often nonfluent because of a lack of practice with reading. Students need ample time to read, read, read. It is also a great idea to try to get students reading for leisure on their own time. The more practice the readers have, the better readers they will become, more quickly. As a future invention specialist, it is also important to note that struggling readers need to see a word as many as forty times before remembering it, compared to the ten times that fluent readers need.

Chapter 9: Vocabulary

Chapter 9 offers many suggestions on how to move away from the traditional vocabulary instruction that teachers have used for years, memorization. I particularly enjoyed this chapter because so often students are learning words that they will probably never use just to pass the vocabulary test on Friday, and then forget the words by Friday afternoon. I remember as a student memorizing words upon words that I have rarely ever used. I probably wouldn’t even be able to put them into a sentence in the proper context because I was only concerned with getting an A on the spelling test. So what can teachers do to get past the old-school vocabulary memorization strategy?

Beers provides many useful suggestions in this chapter. It is paramount that teachers find interactive, fun ways for students to learn new vocabulary that will be beneficial to future reading and writing. One idea that I really liked from this chapter was in lesson 2: teaching students how to use the context as a clue requires that students see relationships among words and can make inferences about the passage. In my field experience, my students get all of their vocabulary words for the week from the text that they are engaging in that particular week. I believe this is really helpful for them, as they are seeing their vocabulary words being used in a real text. My field experience cooperating teacher introduced to me to an activity that our students really enjoyed. It is called Vocabulary CPR. (Context, Product, Resource). In this activity students use the context of the word to figure out the meaning. They then use a resource to identify the definition of the word. This has been very useful for my students, and these are students who have special needs.

I believe there are numerous ways to make vocabulary instruction fun and meaningful. It is up to the teacher to decide how to do so. Beers provides us future teachers with many great ideas pertaining to vocabulary instruction. I will definitely use these as a reference in my own classroom one day.  

Chapter 8: Extending Meaning After-Reading Strategies

Chapter 8 offers strategies that extend the meaning-making process to after-reading activities which will ultimately help dependent readers figure out “how to get it” throughout the entire reading process. Just like Chapter 7, Beers shares several strategies in great depth and then touches on a few other reading strategies that are equally beneficial to all readers.

I really liked how Beers discussed how it is important for teachers to view comprehension as a process and not a product. Beers suggests that if we view comprehension as a process, versus a product, then meaning making extends to activities that occur once the books is read. It is not sufficient to hand students a worksheet with 25 comprehensive questions after reading a text. We must engage them reading strategies that help students focus on constructing meaning.

One reading strategy Beers discusses in this chapter is the concept of a scale. This was new to me. These scales help students make comparisons, recognize contrasts, draw conclusions, and distinguish between facts and opinions. Scales are beneficial for students who need assistance organizing their thoughts or who benefit from seeing information arranged in graphic form. As a future Intervention Specialist, I can see a scale being very useful for my students who struggle with reading and organization. My students may be more apt to engage in discussion when understanding that there is no right or wrong answer and they can only be assessed on their participation.

Another strategy that I believe can be very beneficial for those who struggle is text reformation. Text reformation is a strategy where students transform a text into another type of text. For example, a student may turn expository text into a narrative. I believe that if dependent readers can turn a story into something they are more apt to relate to, they really will have comprehended the text. I could aid in doing these reformations for those students who need extra help, so they are more apt to get the meaning behind the original text. I believe students will enjoy this strategy as they work towards fully comprehending a given text.

All of the strategies that Beers provides in this chapter are great, but there is one more that I see extra beneficial, especially to the audience that I will be catering to as an Intervention Specialist. I believe my students will really find the Sketch to Stretch strategy useful. In this strategy, students work independently or with a partner to create symbolic sketches of their interpretations of the text. Drawing is also popular among young students and this way those students who may struggle with writing can show what they took from the text in a different manner. Beers has really suggested some great strategies in this chapter that I look forward to using in my future classroom. 

Chapter 7: Constructing Meaning During-Reading Strategies

Chapter 7 offers several during-reading strategies that will help dependent readers gather more meaning from texts, and ultimately help them transform into independent readers. Beers suggests that, "it is more critical for dependent readers to talk about text during the reader experience than after it," p. 104. This means that we, as teachers, must pull the invisible process of comprehension to the visible level, which suggests bringing conversation into the classroom as the students are reading, and not just after they have 'read' a text. In order to do just this Beers provides us with numerous reading strategies that can be used in a classroom to aid in comprehension during reading.

The first during-reading strategy Beers suggests is called Say Something. Say something is a really simple strategy that interrupts a student's reading, giving the reader an opportunity to think about what he or she is reading. This strategy is done with a partner. When each reader has reached a specific point in the text, they will stop and discuss what they have read so far, what they understand, what they don't understand, making predictions, etc. I believe this is a great method for students to use while reading. Say Something can also be done silently, where the student would simply jot down their ideas on a post-it or piece of scrap paper. 

Another during-reading strategy to aid in comprehension is rereading. According to Beers, rereading is probably the number one strategy independent readers use when something stumps them in a text. It is also probably the last strategy dependent readers use. I believe rereading is very important for readers to do, whether the purpose is to gather more meaning because the reader didn't understand it the first time, or to look at the text in an alternative way. I also really enjoyed how Beers questions how often teachers-the people who should see the most value in rereading- convince students that there is no value in rereading important texts. For example, how many times have you been told that you can not use a book you have already read for a book report? This is a great point Beers makes and I agree that the advantages of rereading far outweigh the disadvantages.

Finally, the third during-reading strategy Beers provides us with is the Think-Aloud. This strategy helps readers think about how they make meaning. As students read, they pause occasionally to think aloud about connections they are making, images they are creating, problems with understanding that they encounter, and etc. This oral thinking helps the student analyze how he/she is thinking about their reading. It also allows the teacher to understand why a student is having difficulty with a text. I believe think alouds are important for students of all ages and of all subjects. It is also imperative that the teacher often models think alouds when introducing new things.

Beers provides us several other strategies that would be of great use in a classroom. All of these are equally as important as the three that I just described in detail. Double entry journals, logographic cues, bookmarks, ABC’s of comparing and contrasting, post-it notes, character bulletin boards, syntax surgery, signal words and reflections are all strategies that I would someday love to use in my classroom.