Dr. Kylene Beers is Professor of Reading at the University
of Houston. For the last twenty years, Dr. Beers has
studied the reasons for and solutions to students' struggling
with reading or being reluctant to read. Her mission
is to map out strategies for teachers to use with both
struggling and reluctant readers. A group of high school
educators applied Dr. Beers's theories to Wish You
Well and The Bean Trees in order to generate
lessons to be used by other teachers around the country.
When asked if she would be willing to write a foreword
to All America Reads: Secondary Reading Strategies
Applied to David Baldacci's Novel Wish You Well,
Dr. Beers enthusiastically agreed to explain how the
intersection of reading skills and strategies complements
the teaching of a novel such as David Baldacci's Wish
You Well. The following is the text of the foreword
from the All America Reads document, which is adapted
from Dr. Beers' Reading Skills and Strategies: Reaching
Reluctant Readers ublished by Holt, Rinehart and
Winston as part of the Elements of Literature
series.
My journey from being a literature teacher to becoming
a literature/reading teacher has made me wonder what
part, if any, reading skills could play in my work.
The word skills has become somewhat unpopular, implying
that if you believe in skills, then your classroom
is worksheet-driven, drill-laden, and certainly out-dated.
But I can't let go of the fact that I not only believe
in those things called reading skills, I myself, as
a reader, really do use those skills. I see
cause-and-effect relationships, I make inferences
and generalizations, I predict, summarize, compare,
and contrast. I went through school practicing such
skills, and now, as an adult, I'm a good reader who
likes to read. So how could I not believe in reading
skills?
While I can't let go of belief in skills, I also
can't deny the fact that I have seen more and more
students who seem unable to do the skill exercises
I give them. I slowly began to understand that for
students who can generalize, analyze, make connections,
make predictions, see causal relationships, and keep
events in sequence, the worksheets in which they practice
those skills are simply that - practice of something
they can already do. But for students who can't do
those things, the worksheets are just more opportunities
for failure, not opportunities for learning.
So the question remained: How could I teach secondary
students to read within the framework of a literature
classroom? Skill practice wasn't the key, but abandoning
skills wasn't it either. I began rethinking how I
was teaching, studying the psychology of reading and
the reading process, and delving into writings by
specialists like Frank Smith, Louise Rosenblatt, Ken
Goodman, Marie Clay, and Robert Probst. In my classroom,
I stopped using worksheets that were actually just
skill-practice sheets.
I made a list of what my district said were the reading
skills students needed to master - things like comparing
and contrasting, making predictions, drawing conclusions,
forming inferences, determining the main idea, sequencing,
forming opinions, finding cause and effect relationships,
summarizing. Then I asked myself how I could teach
a student who can't summarize to summarize. To answer
that, I first had to understand just what kind of
thinking students need to do in order to summarize.
It seemed to me that, among other things, they need
to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. They have to
be able to sequence. They have to compare and contrast.
Somewhere along the way I came to understand that
reading skills are simply thinking skills
applied to a reading situation. Is the problem that
kids with reading difficulties really can't analyze,
can't evaluate, can't classify? That they lack those
thinking skills? Or can they not do those things in
a reading situation? To find out, I began listening
to students with reading difficulties talk, recording
what they said to learn what type of thinking their
talk revealed. As I listened, I saw what the skill-activity
sheets weren't showing me: these students certainly
can analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. They can compare
and contrast and classify, and they can summarize
an event, pulling out the main ideas. They can do
the thinking. They just didn't yet know how to connect
their thinking skills to a reading situation. They
needed a strategy, a scaffold, that would provide
the framework for the thinking they needed to do to
read with certain skills.
I began trying out lots of strategies with students
to see how strategies and skills intersect. I, like
others, have found that teaching students strategies
gives them a pathway for employing the thinking skills
they possess but may not have yet been able to use
readily in a reading context. Strategies help all
learners. Skilled readers are, in part, skilled because
they understand how to make sense of texts - how to
do all those things we call reading skills without
having to work overtly through a strategy. But less
skilled readers need that overt action. Several different
strategies can be used to teach one reading skill.
For example, to help students make generalizations
I use "Anticipation Guides," "It Says…I
Say," "Most Important Word," or "Sketch
to Stretch." When trying to decide what strategy
to use with a certain student, I always ask myself
how the strategy benefits the student. If the only
benefit is that the student gets practice with a skill
he or she already possesses, then I don't use the
strategy. The point is to help students see that reading
involves thinking and that strategies encourage that
thinking to happen.
I soon discovered that finding strategies to provide
scaffolds to reading skills was much easier than finding
what motivated kids to want to read. Basically, students
with a positive attitude toward reading see reading
as a way to connect personally with a text. While
reading may begin as a solitary act, it quickly becomes
a way to interact with a group, to take part in discussions,
to swap favorite stories, or to argue over themes.
These readers want to choose their own books, become
familiar with authors, go to the library, keep reading
journals, and have small group discussions. They define
reading as "a way to go to new places,"
"a way to be in another world," or "something
that creates a movie in my mind."
Students with a negative attitude toward reading
define reading very differently. They say that reading
is "calling words," "saying words,"
or "just words on page." Few images are
created by the words they read; few personal connections
are forged. When they're asked what would motivate
them to read, they're likely to first answer "nothing."
But in reality, if you watch them closely, you will
see some things that do motivate them. They still
want to choose their own books, but from a narrow
field. They don't know about authors, don't know genre,
and don't know a library's layout. They see a library
as "too big" and don't know "where
any of the good books are." So, they need help
in choosing books.
Struggling readers return year after year to classrooms
where they look failure in the eye daily. Some secondary
students don't return; they finally give up and drop
out. Other students return, but in body only; they've
built a wall around themselves, and apathy has become
their middle name. But some struggling students return
hopeful that this is the year that they'll finally
"get it" and won't have to struggle any
more. Hearing past their snide remarks or seeing past
their blasé looks sometimes is a challenge.
But adolescents who show up daily in classes are telling
us with their presence that they are willing to learn.
When that's the case, we've got to be willing and
able to teach. For many of these students, you become
their best chance at success. Therefore you need every
tool possible to help them. Strategies that facilitate
reading skills, such as the ones found in this document,
are powerful tools. Struggling readers need them and
deserve no less.
Dr. Kylene Beers
Professor of Reading
University of Houston
