G. Kylene Beers

"Kylene Beers and Bob Probst showed teachers how to help students become close readers. Now, in Disrupting thinking they take teachers a step further and discuss an on-going problem: lack of engagement with reading. They explain that all too often, no matter the strategy shared with students, too many students remain disengaged and reluctant readers. The problem, they suggest, is that we have misrepresented to students why we read and how we ought...

For Kylene Beers, the question of what to do when kids can't read surfaced in 1979 when she met and began teaching a boy named George. When George's parents asked her to explain why he couldn't read and how she could help, Beers, a secondary certified English teacher with no background in reading, realized she had little to offer. That moment sent her on a twenty-three-year search for answers to the question: How do we help middle and high schoolers...

Nonfiction intrudes into our world and purports to tell the truth. To evaluate that truth, we need students to be sophisticated, skillful, and savvy readers. And that's why Kylene and Bob wrote Reading Nonfiction, a book that presents: 3 big questions that develop the stance needed for attentive reading; 5 signposts that help readers analyze and evaluate the author's craft; and 7 strategies that develop relevance and fix up confusions.--COVER.