Chapter 6: Frontloading Meaning: Pre-Reading Strategies

As teachers, we have to introduce new texts to our students all the time and not every student is going to be excited for every new piece. If fact, we would be lucky to have even a couple of students eager to start something brand new. However, if we can pique their interest before actually starting the text, perhaps we can get more students eager to read for fun and not just because it's assigned.

One thing we can do is build anticipation. Independent readers already do this, but we need to encourage dependent readers to do this as well. Looking at an interesting title or summary always makes me more eager to read than a book that looks boring. I've never done an anticipation guide like the book talks about, but I did have a high school teacher who would do something similar in our class. While it wasn't about the literature, he would ask us difficult questions similar to the ones in the book where there wasn't one answer. We had to examine our beliefs in order to answer the question. While I liked what he did, I think I would also use the anticipation guides because it seems like an interesting idea. We can also do KWL charts, which I don't personally like but do work.

Chapter 4: Explicit Instruction in Comprehension

Chapter 4 continues the theme of making independent readers out of dependent readers, although this chapter focuses on improving comprehension levels in order to do that. Instead of just telling our students what they should be doing, we need to model what they should be doing. While we're reading aloud, we should predict what is going to happen, summarizing, comparing and contrasting, and etc. We should be doing all the things we want our students to do, but we can't just tell them this. We have to show them how to do this by doing it ourselves and explaining what we are doing.

I think teaching comprehension skills is important and should be something we do. In the long run, if our students have a strong comprehension skills, teaching them the content will be that much easier. While it would be harder for us to do both, in order to best serve our students, we have to be able to teach both.

Chapter 3: Assessing Dependent Readers' Needs

In order to help a dependent reader, we first need to be able to figure out what the student is having problems with. Is it problems with recognizing words, figuring out what an unknown word means? Is the student slow at reading or does he or she have problems keeping the order of events in order? There are of course many more problems a dependent reader may have, but once we recognize what those problems, whether it's one or many, we can then figure out how to go about helping the student. We can help students recognize sight words more easily, give them flow charts to fill out while they're reading, how to think aloud while reading to figure out what is going on, and etc.

Going back to Chapter 2, we can also teach these struggling readers what good readers do: rereading, using prior knowledge, questions the author's purpose and point of view, and etc. I really liked how Kylene Beers points out that reading is an active process because it is. If you just read the text without thinking about it, then the words are just there. It's only when you pay attention that meaning is found within the text and this is what good readers do. This is what struggling readers need to learn in order to become independent readers.

Chapter 2: Creating Independent Readers

Simply put, I think this chapter could be summed up with "read between the lines." As teachers, we have to listen to our students. We have to listen to not only what they're saying, but what they're not vocalizing. Many people struggle with asking for help, often because of a previous attempt for help was denied or weren't really help. Because of this a student may not come to us and say "I can't read this word," or similar phrases. We have to use our knowledge to figure out what the student needs help with and how to get them that help.

I feel like the other important part in this chapter was the section on changing dependent readers into independent readers. We may dream of having perfect readers every year in our classes, but this, obviously, won't be the case. And even our best student may struggle with a certain text because it's not what they are used to. Being able to pass on reading strategies to all students, but most especially the struggling readers, will help out students immensely and will make us good teachers. Although rereading is a valid strategy and works for many students, we should also be able to teach students cognitive skills, how to approach a text positively, and help our students find books that they will enjoy.