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When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 First Edition
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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
- ISBN-109780867095197
- ISBN-13978-0867095197
- EditionFirst Edition
- PublisherHeinemann
- Publication dateOctober 1, 2002
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions8.9 x 7.4 x 0.81 inches
- Print length400 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
About the Author
Kylene Beers, Ed.D., is a former middle school teacher who has turned her commitment to adolescent literacy and struggling readers into the major focus of her research, writing, speaking, and teaching. She is author of the best-selling When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do, co-editor (with Bob Probst and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, and co-author (with Bob Probst) of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading and Reading Nonfiction, Notice & Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies all published by Heinemann. She taught in the College of Education at the University of Houston, served as Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University, and most recently acted as the Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools for the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College. Kylene has published numerous articles in state and national journals, served as editor of the national literacy journal, Voices from the Middle, and was the 2008-2009 President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is an invited speaker at state, national, and international conferences and works with teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the US. Kylene has served as a consultant to the National Governor's Association and was the 2011 recipient of the Conference on English Leadership outstanding leader award. Kylene is now a consultant to schools, nationally and internationally, focusing on literacy improvement with her colleague and co-author, Bob Probst.
Product details
- ASIN : 0867095199
- Publisher : Heinemann; First Edition (October 1, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780867095197
- ISBN-13 : 978-0867095197
- Reading age : 11 - 18 years
- Grade level : 6 - 12
- Item Weight : 1.53 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.9 x 7.4 x 0.81 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #349,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #743 in Reading & Phonics Teaching Materials
- #961 in Educational Certification & Development
- #26,635 in Reference (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Kylene Beers is a former middle school teacher turned teacher educator who spends her time focusing on the needs of struggling readers.
The author of When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do, Kylene's understanding of kids, reading, and teaching makes her a sought after speaker. Collaboration with co-author and colleague Bob Probst has resulted in two best-selling books - Notice and Note, Strategies for Close Reading; and, Reading Nonfiction: Stances, Signposts, and Strategies.
In 2008-2009, she served as President of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and in 2011 she received the NCTE Exemplary Leader Award given by the Conference on English Leadership. She has served as a consultant to the National Governor’s Association Education Committee, was the editor of the national literacy journal Voices from the Middle, taught in the College of Education at the University of Houston, was Senior Reading Researcher for the Comer School Development Program at Yale University, and has most recently served as the Senior Reading Advisor to the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University.
You can follow Kylene on Twitter @KyleneBeers or on her Facebook page or her blog at KyleneBeers.com.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book provides practical ways to teach and practice reading strategies. They find the writing clear and engaging, with solid theory on reading issues. The author's caring and respectful approach is appreciated.
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Customers find the book offers practical ways to teach reading strategies. They appreciate the well-researched methods for instruction and the ideas and examples provided. The book discusses problems students face with reading from the author's experience.
"...end of the book are appendices that include such helpful reproducibles as bookmark templates, common roots/prefixes/and suffixes, Fry and Dolch word..." Read more
"...As a secondary reading intervention teacher, this has proven invaluable...." Read more
"...is for middle and high school teachers, most of her techniques are excellent techniques for the younger learners as well, especially the fifth grade..." Read more
"...The information about different reading strategies including those to use before, during and after reading is very good, however, and the reason..." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. It provides a practical guide to understanding why students struggle with reading. The writing is clear and well-developed, making it a must-read for English teachers. Readers appreciate the solid theory on reading issues and the useful strategies, vocabulary, fluency, phonics, literary discussions, common spelling rules, and booklists for different types of readers.
"...frequent English words, word sorts, easily confused words, common spelling rules, and booklists for every type of reader. Can you say goldmine?..." Read more
"...practical, "use in your classroom the next day" ideas that are easy to implement...." Read more
"...But this book was so engagingly written, so clear and well-developed, that even with this flaw, I still give it 5 stars." Read more
"...The book also addresses vocabulary, fluency, spelling, and choosing the right books. I also enjoyed the style of the book...." Read more
Customers appreciate the author's caring and respectful writing style. They find the anecdotes presented in a conversational manner.
"...weren't going well - I think these illustrate a humble and caring attitude that Kylene brings to the classroom...." Read more
"This is, at least for me, an paradigm-shifting book. Beers' amazingly humble, conversational style of presenting anecdotes, research and techniques..." Read more
"...The writing is clear and respectful to both the reader and their students...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2007We secondary (Grades 7-12) English teachers have a weakness and it's called reading. Oh, we're GREAT readers and love literature and know how to teach it (to avid and average readers). But throw a kid at us who struggles with reading (and we get them every year) and they're likely to fall through the cracks, because our solutions are rather simplistic. We say things like, "Read it again," or "Sound the word out," or "Look the word up." When they hesitate before a strange word while reading aloud, we give them the word. When they don't do the reading assignment, we watch them flunk our quizzes and wonder why they are so lazy.
Enter Kylene Beers, with easily the best book I've read on the subject of struggling readers who are NOT of elementary age, but of middle and high school age. Yes, elementary teachers have reading specialists to fall back on, but in secondary schools, it is often either the English teacher who must intervene or no one. For Beers, the inspiration for writing this book was the number of former students she had who were condemned to "or no one" because she simply did not know what to do. For me (and probably legions of other teachers) her story will sound chillingly familiar. Fortunately, WHEN KIDS CAN'T READ: WHAT TEACHERS CAN DO is the antidote to our problems.
In this book, Beers identifies the myriad of types of students who struggle with reading, and why. She provides practical strategies on how to intervene if your students struggle with comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and word recognition/fluency/automaticity. There's also advice on how to help kids in responding to literature, as well as how to help them find a book that will tap into their interests.
Each chapter includes an introduction and thorough definition of the problem, a section called "Step Inside a Classroom" which details real-life transcripts of kids having this exact reading difficulty, and a list of various strategies you can try -- even if it means having different groups with scaffolding activities within your language arts classroom. At the end of the book are appendices that include such helpful reproducibles as bookmark templates, common roots/prefixes/and suffixes, Fry and Dolch word lists, common phonics generalizations, 175 most common syllables in the 5,000 most frequent English words, word sorts, easily confused words, common spelling rules, and booklists for every type of reader. Can you say goldmine? This is the end of the rainbow, folks.
I can't recommend this book enough to my fellow 7-12 English teachers. Reach out to your weak readers. Don't condemn them to a life of mediocrity (or worse) in literacy by assuming either it's their problem or they are beyond help. It's not and they aren't. Buy this book and put it to good use. This is where theory meets the road (called "practicality"). Be not only an English teacher, but a READING teacher (in every sense of the word).
- Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2024This is one of the few books I read in college that I still use today, 15 + years later. As a secondary reading intervention teacher, this has proven invaluable. I lost the copy I kept since college so bought another one to have in the classroom. Every teacher should read this book!
- Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2007I'm a Title 1 teacher in Oregon, and I work with the types of readers that Kylene Beers talks about in her book "When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do". I found her book to be loaded with practical, "use in your classroom the next day" ideas that are easy to implement.
Now, my school is an elementary school, and initially I avoided this book due to the "Guide for Teachers 6-12" label on it. Boy, was I wrong. While the focus of her book is for middle and high school teachers, most of her techniques are excellent techniques for the younger learners as well, especially the fifth grade students that I'm working with. She has taken many of the concepts we use in elementary school and upgraded them for older kids; but good teaching is good teaching, no matter what you are trying to do.
This book is so practical, on the inside front cover, you are given a simple chart that list reading problems that kids have, and the chapter that you can immediately turn to in order to get ideas! It can't get any friendlier than that.
However, I also suggest a more thorough read through of this content. Beers talks throughout the book of a student named George that she taught early in her career, before she knew much about teaching. Sprinkled through the text, before and after each chapter, write writes lovingly to George about how she failed him time and time again, in direct relation to the content of the chapter. As a teacher, looking back on my own career, I can totally relate to that. If I knew then what I know now... the letters become Beers "mea culpa", and they are a beautiful addition to the text.
I highly recommend this book for ANY teacher struggling to teach struggling readers reading. It's practical, easy to use, and loaded with great ideas.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2011This was a required book for one of my education classes. Though it is for classes 6 - 12, it is written as though it is for elementary school. Perhaps it is because I do not agree with the authors opinions and initial thoughts about students and teaching at the beginning that set me against her style of writing (she expresses her disappointment at teaching middle schoolers and her feeling that it is not her responsibility to help teach her children to read -- If they couldn't already do it, she didn't think that it was *her* responsibility to change that). This is my reason for not loving this book.
The information about different reading strategies including those to use before, during and after reading is very good, however, and the reason that I bought this book again after the class was finished and I was in the classroom. There are many strategies listed in this book and they are gone over in great detail, which is very helpful. Overall, a helpful book, but I wish that the teacher had not included so much about her opinions and experiences.
Top reviews from other countries
- M. R. NewellReviewed in Canada on October 7, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars I'm seriously gonna be a reading teaching maven!
When I learned to teach, it was assumed that the students in the age bracket that I was to teach had already learned to read. I would help them comprehend their reading more deeply. It did not work out that way. Plenty of my students struggle to read, even though they are in middle school. I was given worksheets and much superficial advice and was not feeling all that good about my work with my students. Until I finally read this book. Dr. Beers explains in a very heartfelt format that includes her letters of apology to one of her first struggling readers, George and how impotent and misunderstanding she was with him. Then she goes on to explain what she has learned in the time since first struggle. It is a memory, I believe most of us teachers have; a student whom we feel we failed as a teacher. Her come back, in the learning she can share with us so that she might change that first bad ending is powerful. She lays it out; the research, the strategies, the ways to share the information with a class in an effective manner. I am really heartened by this book. I have made lesson plans and scaffolding materials directly from it. Then, as I apply this, I learn it in a way that I have internalized it and made it my own. I'm seriously gonna be a reading teaching maven!
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on October 17, 2017
5.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend this book to any teacher of struggling readers in ...
An outstanding resource filled with practical suggestions to improve students' reading comprehension. The information compiled in the appendix, alone, is worth the price of the book! I have purchased copies both for my own professional library, as well as for my school's resource department. I highly recommend this book to any teacher of struggling readers in the junior, intermediate and senior grades.