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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 Can’t 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 it’s not just the strategies that make this book so valuable. It’s the invitations to “step inside a classroom” and eavesdrop on teacher/student interactions. It’s 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/Literacy
Toronto District School Board 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 Can’t 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 it’s not just the strategies that make this book so valuable. It’s the invitations to “step inside a classroom” and eavesdrop on teacher/student interactions. It’s 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/Literacy
Toronto District School Board
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.
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2001 NCTE Richard W. Halle Award