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Struggling Writers and Struggling Readers

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Struggling Writers and Struggling Readers

Kylene Beers and Linda Reif

Kylene Beers

One of the most important ingredients for student success is dependent on teacher knowledge.

Studies:

"Teacher preparation is the strongest correlation for student achievement in reading and mathematics." Darling-Hammond, L. 2000. Teacher Quality-Student Achievement: A review of state policy evidence.

The single biggest factor affecting academic success (? didn't get the right word down) of any population of youngsters is the effectiveness of the individual classroom teacher." Sanders, D. 2000. Issues at the Table: Teacher Quality and Student Achievement.

We can read without writing, but we cannot write without reading. Struggling writers are struggling readers. We underestimate the value of writing as a powerful tool for teaching reading.

Strategies:

  1. Scribing for students: for those who cannot or will not write.
  2. Story-boarding (drawing)
    • Many people story-board to help them get their ideas out.
    • "Words are the most important thing we can put on the table." Quote from a New England story-teller who came to talk to a third grade class about how to use story-boards to help their writing.
    • How to use:
      • Start with family stories because every one has a family story.
        • Also allows for family involvement.
      • Spelling and drawing don't count because you're interested in the ideas.
        • NOT using drawing as "performance"...stick figures are OK.
        • Can be taken to the level of drawing as performance, but when we use drawing as thinking, art and spelling don't count.
      • Story boarding allows for help with organization.
        • Use Post-It Notes so things can be moved around (drafting process)
      • Symbolism--when you have the same thing appearing again and again, it needs to look the same.
      • When to use this technique:
        • Retelling--what do we understand when we read?
        • Character analysis--what do characters look like in the beginning? In moments of doubt/weakness? When they've crossed "the point of no return"?
        • Storyboarding as note-taking for when students are struggling with content area reading--read aloud and draw as students are being read to.
          • Must often insist because middle schoolers think it's for little kids (go back to the ideas of it happening every where~plane evacuations, powerpoint presentations, etc) Can tell them that in Japan, the only person allowed to translate Peanut Cartoons is the poet laurate...it's taken that seriously.
          • When students have questions, put keywords in the squares to remind students of what goes there.
          • *ALL* students need to do this so those who really need it are comfortable.
        • Storyboarding as a writing conference record.
        • Storyboarding as research projects/presentations.
        • Drawing vocabulary (content area reading)--what is their understanding of the word? (Reif uses 3-5 words per week from their reading)

The writing comes when students have the pictures to hang it on.

Teaching Cartooning:

Some times pictures are the appropriate way to present information, and when we do that, we need to help students learn how to both read and write in a different manner.

  • Where are the appropriate places to linger?
  • Where does detail need to be expanded?

Linda Reif-

Introducing the concept of quickwrites

Students need to both see and hear the prompt, which means that you need to have an overhead prepared or individual handouts ready for students.

Reif took us through the quickwrite procedure, using "To a Daughter Leaving Home", "Owl Pellets", "Bullfrogs", and her own rambling autobiography.

In each instance, we were asked to write what we noticed in a minute and a half.

  • Better to leave students wanting.
  • Illustrates the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing.
  • Gives students a choice about what they're going to write.

Someone else's words gives them a "whole" to hold on to-a hook. They can get rid of the hook when they no longer need it, but until then they're given the opportunity to "hold on to words", which is less threatening for struggling writers.

Other activities:

  1. Write Arounds:
    • Highlighting books and allowing students to "take a role."
    • For example: One student might get Jonas's book, where all of Jonas's speaking is highlighted. Another student might bet the Giver's book, where all of the Giver's speaking is highlighted.
    • Allow students time to read their "book".
    • Have them write a first person response.
    • They hand that off to the right, and that person responds to what the original write put down.
    • Hand it around to the right again.
    • Keep doing that until it gets back to the original writer, who then writes a final response, encompassing what others at the table have written.
    • Give kids credit for the activity not to get them to do it, but because it's important.
  2. Found Poetry:
    • Found poetry allows students to construct their own personal meaning from some one else's words. They are adding to what they are taking from the reading.
  3. Drawing:
    • Students can respond to their own art or to some one else's.
      • Reif uses the example of taking students to an art museum to sketch landscapes. There was an exhibit on GWI (can't remember what that stands for) and students asked if they could sketch those instead. Then then wrote reactions to their art, inspired by some one else's art
  4. Collaborative Writing:
    • Allow them to write together.
    • They can produce more effective writing with a partner than they can on their own.

Kylene Beers:

When they can't read.

Listening to students helps us understand language and student problems. If we can step out and see the problem from the student's point of view, we get there (helping them read and enjoy reading) faster. Start with what the students say. Get the students to give the reasons.

  • Gives the example of Tonya. What tape plays in Tonya's mind as she reads?
    • If she can't understand what she's reading, it's the problem of the teacher.
    • If it's her problem, she fails and her self-esteem takes the hit.
    • We have to see it from her perspective: Why try when you can't do it?
    • As teachers, we must give her a text that she can do.
    • We have to stop the looping tape that plays while she reads.

A reason students give for when they don't read:

Reading is boring. They can't see it, do not visualize what they read, cannot experiment with creating a movie in their heads.

  • If you can't see it or hear it, you can't understand it.
  • Try Storyboarding.
  • Visualization is a critical piece for struggling readers. (See Reading is Seeing by Jeff Willhem available April 2004 from Scholastic)

Confidences students need in order to be be able to successful in school (all statistics from Dr. Beers' book):

  • Cognitive-students need to have decoding/recognition and vocabulary skills
    • Vocabulary:
      • Children in a literary-rich home hears 45,000,000 words by the time they are four years old.
      • Children in a literary-poor home hear 12,000,000 words by the time they are four years old.
      • Parents in a literary-rich home use the same 20,000 words.
      • Parents in a literary-poor home use fewer than 10,00 different words with their children.
      • To get to a literary-rich environment, students need 20-40 minutes a day of being read to. It does not have to be uninterrupted, consecutive time. It does not have to happen just at bed time and it doesn't have to happen at home.
      • The Matthew Effect-the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. In terms of vocabulary development, it's not important that they just hear the word but they hear how it is used.
        • 17 for every 1,000: "rare" words used in adult-to-adult conversations
        • 11 for every 1,000: "rare" words used in adult-to-child conversations. Do NOT talk "Down" to children
        • 22 for every 1,000:"rare" words used on television stations such as PBS, the History Channel, A&E, etc.
        • 3 for every 1,000:"rare" words used on primetime television
        • 30 for every 1,000:"rare" words found in children's books
        • 53 for every 1,000:"rare" words found in comics (graphic novels)
        • 128 for every 1,000:"rare" words found in expository text (text books)
        • Children from a literary environment, they need to be exposed to an unfamiliar words 10 times before they understand the word. Exposed means students need an opportunity to learn it, see it, play with it, read it, write it. That does NOT mean repetition (writing the word 10X each).
        • Children from a literary-poor environment need to be exposed to an unfamiliar word 40 times before they understand it.
        • In looking at the NAEP exam the following holds:
          • 90th percentile is reading 40.4 minutes per day at school and are being exposed to 2, 357,00 words per year.
          • 50th percentile is reading 12.9 minutes per day at school and are being exposed to 601,00 words per year.
          • 10th percentile is reading 1.6 minutes per day at school and are being exposed to 51,000 words per year.
        • The question becomes how do we push the time for ALL students?
      • The single-most ineffective way to teach vocabulary:
        • Give students a list of words not related to their reading
        • Make them do activities with those words
        • Test them over the words at the end of the week.
      • Ways to help students with vocabulary:
        • Janet Allen's Linear Arrays-it is critical to define the polar ends and determine what the question students are to answer. Doesn't always have to be a list of words; it can be phrases.
        • Drawing the words
        • Placing the familiar in the unfamiliar because then you must think harder -take the words and put them in a recipe--"how to learn vocabulary" "how to NOT learn vocabulary"
      • Students WANT to learn the words but they want it to be meaningful.
  • Social/Emotional-students want to be part of the literacy community
    • Beers did interviews in schools, with first-tenth graders. In first grade, students are eager and they want to participate. They raise their hands and are eager. By the time they get to tenth grade, they are not as eager to participate.
    • Where do the First graders go? We destroy them. We teach them that if you're going to raise your hand, you better be prepared to be wrong.
  • Text-students need stamina; the ability to stay with it when it gets difficult.

Click here for a link to a summary of Kylene Beers and Linda Reif's 2002 NCTE Convention Workshop.

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Last Updated April 11, 2011

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