Blog Post 5: Chapters 11 and 12

Chapter eleven, Sharing Information with Families, focuses how to better communicate with parents. I really enjoyed reading this chapter because it gave great advice to teachers on how they should professionally respond to family members concerns regarding their child. There were sixteen commonly asked questions that parents have regarding their child. In the past, I’ve heard horrible stories of teachers responding in the “wrong way” to the parents of some of their students. I’ve even witnessed incidents where parents have become angry with their child’s teacher for responding in an unprofessional way. This chapter really guides teachers on what they can say in scenarios. A question that was listed as a concern a parent may have was: “It seems like my child just memorizes the books he brings home. Last night he even told me he could read it with his eyes closed. Is this okay?”. The response that was given to this parent’s question/concern was both encouraging to the parent and the child. Since I'm a substitute teacher, I personally do not get one-on-one meetings with parents, but when I worked at a summer school program I was always communicating with parents and ensuring the parents that their child was making progress.

Chapter twelve, Teachers Make the Difference, focuses on encouraging teachers to continue expanding their knowledge to help support struggling readers to improve. According to the text, “The generally accepted theory of how reading works is that reading consists of a number of skills that can be taught in some sequential manner”. The greatest thing I learned from this chapter is that in order to make a difference in the as an educator, I must change my way of thinking. Reading is a process and in order for a student to grow as a reader, they need help in building their reading process. “Many more teachers are starting to view reading as a process in the head of the reader and to understand that struggling readers need help in building that process”. The text list several possibilities of how teachers can begin to use this new way of thinking to make a difference in schools, teachers, and students. I plan to use all of the points given (p. 225), but the one I was able to use the most is: “Keeping track of the time that your struggling students are involved in real reading and writing. Is it as much time as your more able readers are spending engaged in authentic tasks?”. During this time, I could try working one-on-one with students to see where we need to focus more on.  

What You Need to Know About Assessments, Sharing Information with Families, and Making a Difference

For the last blog, I read chapters 10, 11, and 12 in Catching Readers Before They Fall. The authors talk about authentic, ongoing, and informative assessments. As teachers, we continually look for what readers can do and can almost do, and make a note of behaviors in order to provide support and guide your teaching decisions. Informal assessment tools include anecdotal notes taken during reading conferences or observing students. During conferences, teachers can look for what the child can do independently, what they can almost do, and what they can't do yet. Note-taking while observing allows us to see behaviors or patterns. Running records allow us to gain insight into which strategies are being used as well as the appropriate reading level for the student. Formal assessments include benchmarks, running records, and tests. Teachers usually use benchmark assessments at the beginning, middle, and end of the year in order to get information on a child's instruction level, comprehension, and fluency. "The more that we know about what students' strengths are and what they struggle with, the more closely we can match our instruction to what each child needs to learn next." Assessments ultimately inform our teaching. When assessments indicate that only some children need practice with a skill, then guided reading groups or conferences may be useful rather than teaching the whole class and repeating to other students. Every time that you instruct a struggling reader, you must help build his or her reading process system and ongoing, authentic, and informative assessment is what helps that to happen.

Chapter 11 focuses on sharing information with families. "The majority of parents are not educators and therefore they rely on us to inform them of how children best learn to read." It's our job to help families understand how they can help their children at home. This chapter is very useful because the authors wrote down common questions that families have and went through each of them to suggest ways that you can talk to parents about their child's progress. This will help strengthen the connection between home and school.

Chapter 12 reinforces that teachers make a difference. "School administrators and teachers alike should remain vigilant about finding ways to teach all children, no matter what their strengths and weaknesses." All children can learn. However, children learn at different rates and in different ways. Teachers must identify the needs of all of their students in order to provide the most effective instruction and maximize instructional time. Teachers have to change the world a little bit at a time.

Blog Post 4

I am continuing to read, Catching Young Readers Before They Fall. I gathered a lot of information from chapters 9 and 10. Chapter 9 focused on inferring and summarizing. The chapter states, "Some teachers may think inferring is predicting, but we believe it includes more than just predicting." Fountas and Pinnell says, "Readers who infer go beyond the literal meaning of a text to derive what is not there but is implied." There are many opportunities to infer when reading. These opportunities can derive from the setting, thoughts on characters personalities, a poems meaning, looking at the author's perspective, discovering the theme, determining a problem, discovering the meaning of new vocabulary, and when looking at figurative language. As teachers, we should stop during shared reading or read aloud books to ask questions and see what the students can infer about these different scenarios. They are using their thinking skills and what they already know so far about a book to infer what is happening. Inferring also helps build a readers comprehension skills. (Johnson and Keier 2010)

Chapter 10 focuses on assessment and looking closely at readers. The chapter says, "In order to know how our readers are progressing, we must be careful observers, constantly making decisions about how to use the information we gather to inform our instruction." The authors of this book believe that assessment must be authentic, ongoing, and informative in order for it to effectively be used by teachers. The chapter lists several different assessment tools including conferencing, anecdotal note taking, running records, developmental reading assessment, and beginner reading assessments. I think it is important to use a variety of assessment tools because if a student does not assess well one way, the teacher may be surprised if they use a different assessment tool. Students respond better to different tools so I think it is important to look at their reading abilities from more than one angle. (Johnson and Keier 2010)

Blog 4: Chapter 10-Assessment

According to Johnson and Keier (2010), "Formative, ongoing assessments by teachers and students
based on daily work need to be the mainstay." Our day to day teaching should not be determined by
results of standardized tests or computerized end of book tests because the data is just not enough to
guide instruction (Johnson and Keier, 2010). In this chapter, Johnson and Keier (2010) state that
literacy behaviors from students should be observed by teachers throughout the day during reading,
writing, and conferencing. Teachers should make notes on the behaviors they observe (Johnson and Keier, 2010). The observations show students who are struggling, as well as students who are ready to move on. I use this information in my classroom to determine my small groups, whether it is for text levels or reading strategies. In this chapter, I love this quote from Fountas and Pinnell, "You cannot see into children's minds, but their behaviors can guide your teaching decision" (Johnson and Keier, 2010). This quote means a lot to me because I believe when we observe our students reading behaviors and analyze the behaviors it shows us some of what goes on in their mind while reading. Based on the text, I agree that teachers should focus on all readers, but more time should be spent with the struggling readers. In my classroom, I meet with my struggling readers three times a week and my other groups one to two times a week. I assign my strong group of readers a book to read during the week. When they meet with me they discuss the book and strategies or skills they used while reading. When I work with my struggling readers, I model how to use strategies, and allow practice time as I listen to one child read a page or pages. Then, we discuss the strategies and how they were effective. Some of the assessment tools discussed were informal assessments such as anecdotal notes during conferences, shared reading, guided reading, and writing. Formal assessments discussed were benchmarks, running records, and adopted tests (Johnson and Keier, 2010). I actually thought running records were formal and informal. I thought running records from classroom leveled texts were informal, and assessments such as Fountas and Pinnell were the formal running records. This is something I am curious about. Although I have been teaching for six years I just learned the importance of conferences about two years ago. I would hear about it during professional development, but finally was show how to conduct a conference two years ago. This year my conferences are even better because I had a lot of practice. One "ah-ha" moment for me after reading the chapter was making sure the student is actually enjoying the book. I always focus on the strategies that I loss focus on the student's enjoyment. The text discussed the issue of finger pointing while reading. I can relate because I had a parent just this past week who asked me if it was okay to have his daughter point while she read because constantly loss her place or skipped lines while reading. I told him I do not encourage it because it slows down the reader. I told him to just encourage her to reread when he notices her error. Lastly, I like how this chapter discussed how to organize assessment data.. I am in the process of reorganizing my data notebook to include a binder with notebook tabs that include: class grid forms, class list for each month, guided reading planning sheet, and individual student forms. At my new school the data notebook was already created, but I plan to reorganize it to meet my expectations so that I can manage it better and monitor my students growth better.

Blog 4 No More Independent Reading Without Support

Blog 4

Making the Most of Independent Reading

The first directive is to provide a purpose for reading: What, How, and Why Readers Read. At first, I was wondering how one teacher could set an individual purpose for each reader and their books – IMPOSSIBLE! Now, I am thinking (and hoping) the author means students reading to practice the objective of the focus lesson.  

The author tells us to teach our students how to choose appropriate books and reminds us that the appropriate book is not always at the independent level. It depends on what the student’s purpose for reading is. The book could be on an instructional level if the student has extensive knowledge of the material or is highly motivated to read it.

It is also beneficial to show students what strategies readers use to make meaning of books by talking about your thinking as you have read alouds. Model how to talk about books with their peers just as you talk about books to your peers. Invite them to join in your discussion of the book as you read aloud. The author suggests the following books to help support independent talk: Questioning the Author (Beck et al. 1997), Reciprocal Teaching at Work (Oczkus 2010), Literature Circles(Daniels 2002).

After you model thinking aloud, choose a student to share something about the book they have read. Ask another student to expand upon the book talk by sharing “When you said . . . it made me think about . . .”

Another strategy to use is “Turn and talk.” The author says that turn and talk " . . . prepares students for student-led small group discussions . . ." You provide a prompt about a character in a read aloud for instance and the student turns and talks to their partner about that character. The teacher is supposed to move around the room and listen and guide, if necessary.

Tactics Teachers Can Use to Keep Things Hopping During IR

Have plenty of books. The author wonders why we should have 300 and not 1000. She says, "I'd strive for at least 1000 books and I wouldn't stop there." She says to look in book rooms whose keys have been forgotten, pick up text sets that are unused. Class libraries should have half fiction and have informational books. Many times, our libraries have many more fiction books. Organize the books according to subjects as well as instructional levels.

IR might only last for 10 to 15 minutes when you first begin. Make sure the students have instructional level books in their box as well as subject matter that they are interested in.

Monitor their IR. Look at the class as a whole to determine who might need to be refocused and ask them, “I’m noticing your having a hard time today. What’s going on? How can I help?” Don’t make it a punitive issue.

Blog Post 4: Chapters 9 and 10

Chapter nine, Spotlight on Inferring and Summarizing, focuses on ways to make sure students fully grasp the comprehension strategies taught to them. Comprehension strategies such as questioning, visualizing, inferring, and summarizing are discussed throughout this chapter. Chapter nine begins by giving great insight into how teachers incorporate whole class discussions and inferring on a daily basis during story time. A powerful statement that I found on reading stories to children is, “The beauty of storytelling is that the children have to create their own images, depending on the words of the story alone with no picture support. The point is to allow discussions to spring naturally from the ideas, confusions, connections, or questions that the students have”. In the past, I found it somewhat frustration when I would do storytelling or read-alouds with discussions throughout the story. I would always have students throw out comments that confused their classmates. The frustration would come from not knowing how to teach the students how to separate from making assumptions to making inferences. As the text stated, “Inferring is one strategy that we find often causes confusion for some teachers; it can be difficult to define and teachers can be unsure of how to teach for it”. The best way I learned to solve this issues is to model it for the students. I made inferences about a story as I read to the class.  

Before reading this chapter, I thought inferring was basically predicting, but inferring is much more than that. Inferring is basically figuring out something that the author doesn’t actually say within the story. Predicting is guessing and inferring is using context clues within a story to search for a fact. An example of inferring from the chapter is: “We read this sentence to any class of students-“The children put on their mittens and scarves and went out in the snow to play-then ask them, “What season is it?” and they always know it is winter”. This chapter raised my awareness of inferring and its importance.

After chapter nine focuses on inferring, the next focus is on teaching summarizing to students. From the text, I learned how to successfully model summarizing for young students. “When a reader summarizes he or she: deletes unimportant information, highlights important words or phrases, and puts ideas in his or her own words. Students need to hear you think aloud and see you do these things: cross out extra and/or repeated words, circle important words and phrases, and write in the margins”. I incorporated this into the classroom this week by modeling how to summarize exactly the way the text instructs. Then, I assigned the students to think about a book they recently read and to summarize the books or story in their notebooks. I reminded the students to tell the main ideas of the story without giving away the ending of the story. Since I was with second graders, I did walk them through this by asking questions such as: “What is the main ideas in the story? What are some important details in your story? How do you know they are important? Did these details cause a problem in the story?”. This assignment went very well. I only had a couple of students who needed one-on-on or small group support in completing this assignment.

Chapter ten, Assessment: Looking Closely at Readers, focuses on different aspects of assessing. The main point of this chapter is making sure the assessments used in the classroom are authentic, ongoing, and informative. Taking notes is a part of every guided reading lesson, and reflecting on the anecdotal notes allows us to see patterns and behaviors that change over time (p.182). Since I technically never had my own classroom with the same students, I do find it to be overwhelming to think about organizing all the assessment information on my students. I’ve been in classrooms where the teacher used sticky notes for everything, but that never seemed like a good idea. It only caused their desk to look like a complete mess in my opinion. The organizational technique I learned about in this chapter that I would like to adopt into the classroom would be the class grid for each subject taught, the monthly class list for reading, and the individual student forms (pgs. 191-194). The examples given in the text for thee organizational techniques appear to be very effective

What You Need to Know About Comprehension, Inferring, and Summarizing

Continuing with reading Catching Readers Before They Fall, I am going to be talking about chapters 8 and 9 in this blog. Chapter 8 focuses on whether or not strategies should be explicitly taught in order for students to understand and use them. Every student develops a system that will help him or her comprehend texts and many average readers, and especially struggling readers, will need support. Peter Johnson states that "we have to decide what to be explicit about for which students and when to be explicit about it." The need for explicit strategy instruction is higher for struggling readers, so we need to explicitly teach it to them and not as much to more advanced readers. However, we need to continuously encourage students to use strategies that they already know how to use, even if we are only focusing on a certain strategy at that time. We need to be present in order to support problem-solving attempts made by the student. With comprehension strategies, some students need to be walked through how a reader makes connections or questions or visualizes during reading. For some students, the process may start slowly before it speeds up and they are doing this often. Modeling strategies is one of the best ways for children to understand how to utilize them. For example, if a teacher begins to read to her students, she may not introduce the strategy "questioning," but she talks about what she is reading and models questions that she has in order to understand what she is going to read. "The goal is not naming a strategy, but applying it to the reading of text." The example for "visualizing" is similar. While reading, the teacher stops and talks about what she is visualizing from reading the text or what she is visualizing from prior knowledge to reading. "One goal should be for students to feel the strategy working for them-they will only take ownership of the strategy and incorporate it into their reading process system if they feel it has value for them."

This leads us into chapter 9, which continues to focus on strategies, but puts a spotlight on inferring and summarizing. It is important for students to have inferential thinking in order to understand pas the literal surface level of the texts. It is reemphasized that it is more important for students to infer while reading rather than know the name or definition for it. "We keep the focus of the lesson on comprehension and then have the students notice how we went about acquiring meaning." This will also help students to be able to do this independently. Students can learn to infer at the word level (meaning of new terms), the text level (predicting what might happen or inferring about the characters or plot), and beyond text level (theme, perspective, etc.). Of course, we want them to be able to infer on all levels as much as possible because inferring is closely related to comprehending. The book gives tons of books that can be used for inferring on pages 165-172. Summarizing is another strategy discussed in this chapter, especially on tests. In order to model summarizing, it's important for students to see unnecessary information crossed out, important facts highlighted, and the information rewritten in your own words. All of the strategies mentioned within these chapters are very important. However, it's more important that the students know how to use a strategy rather than know the name for that strategy.

Blog 3

In the text Catching Readers Before They Fall, I chose the chapter titled "I Thought I Knew How to Teach Reading, but Whoa!" Johnson and Keier (2010) explain some strategies in this chapter that teachers can use as a starting point with struggling readers. Some of the starting points include: letter identification, writing vocabulary, hearing and recording sounds in words, high-frequency word assessment, read alouds, shared reading with big book and poems, community writing, and time for independent reading (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Johnson and Keier (2010) states that teachers should look at working with struggling readers in a positive way in three ways: expect that the lowest-achieving children can learn to read and write, support children as they learn how to learn, and believe that you are the one who will teach this child to read and write (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Some early key strategies that were suggested for teachers to use included: thinking strategies to predict words, phonemic awareness, self-monitoring, and early fluency (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Johnson and Keier (2010) state that to teach directionality, teachers can write a sentence and cut them apart as the child practices pulling down the words after the teacher models. I started using this strategy with my first graders last year and this year to practice fluency along with directionality. I chose sentences that I knew would have a challenging word or words as a teaching point. then, I sent home in an envelope for students to practice at home. Johnson and Keier (2010) states that we should chose to begin reading books and writing messages to show children reading and writing as meaningful. "Thinking about reading is emphasized every time we read with students" (Johnson and Keier, 2010). If we do not take time to involve students in conversation, "we miss opportunities to get students to make connections, infer, and ask questions about what they are reading" (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Phonics is very important to teach to early readers because "many letters make a variety of sounds, and different letters or letter combinations can represent many sounds" (Johnson and Keier, 2010). Currently, I have three struggling readers who are struggling in this area because they do not remember the sounds of some blends and digraphs, as well as the letters that have more than one sound such as "g." Teachers can be flexible when teaching phonics and phonemic awareness by teaching it during transitions, before related arts, or at the end of the day. One concept in the chapter I liked was when Katie worked with three students on phonemic awareness by giving them three cards of a sun, table, pig, and BINGO chips. She called out words for students to match the beginning sound by placing the chips on the card. She would say "pencil/sun, pencil/table, or pencil/pig" as students determined the matched beginning sound. I am going to use this process with my struggling readers to practice blends, digraphs, and word families. Self-monitoring was also discussed in this chapter. I teach this strategy during mini-lessons, but based on my observations I know I have to go back and reteach it to remind my struggling readers. Lastly, when working with students on early fluency I liked the idea of "performances" after the teacher models. Last week my students and I read a lot of Dr. Seuss books during mini-lessons and partner reading in honor of his birthday. I shared with them how we did a reader's theater of Green Eggs and Ham when I taught at summer reading camp. So, now my students want to "perform" for our principal and reading coach. Now, they are preparing for their performances. Instead of performing Green Eggs and Ham I now think we are going to do "The Wonderful World of Dr. Seuss" as each group of partners choose a book to perform a few pages. This will build their fluency and they will have fun at the same time.

Blog Post 3

I am continuing to read the book, Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier. This week, I will be reviewing chapters 6, 7, and 8. Chapter six covered interactive read aloud. As teachers, sometimes we have to just let our students talk. The book states, "Interactive read aloud time is the perfect setting for having students actively involved in talking and thinking about texts." (Johnson and Keier) Reading is a social time and I love that books allow students to recall and make connections to their own lives from reading. This is a very important time for students to have social interactions.

Chapter 7 covered how to teach reading. My first year of teaching, I remember thinking, "how in the world do I even begin to teach reading?" This chapter goes over where to begin. First, you have to know where your students are academically. Use the tools that your school provides you with to find this out. This can include letter assessments, DRA, high frequency word assessments, etc. Then, begin working on key strategies. This book states that key strategies include: directionality, thinking strategies, letter identification and phonics, phonemic awareness, knowing the difference between words and letters, self monitoring, and early fluency. (Johnson and Keier) These really are the beginning steps for teaching a child to read. I would also say finding out their interests. Find books on topics that they are interested in.

Chapter 8 covered comprehension. This chapter focuses a lot on questioning. It suggests having questions ready before, during, and after a lesson to keep students engaged and thinking. It also talks about visualizing. Visualizing as you are reading, allows one to comprehend things. The book states, "When you visualize, or make visual images as you read, you usually are making that image based on some prior knowledge you have with that topic, or you are inferring based on some past experience." (Johnson and Keier)

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 provide great insight for teaching reading and guiding instructional strategies!

-Kristen Cochran

Blog Post 3: Catching Readers Before They Fall. Ch. 6, 7, 8

Chapter 6, Interactive read- aloud: Talking Our Way Through Texts, focused on how to engage young children in think-alouds, modeling, and interactive discussions with literature books. This chapter taught the difference between traditional read-alouds and interactive read-alouds. Before reading this chapter, I thought traditional read-alouds and interactive read-alouds were the same thing, but I learned from the text that interactive read-alouds are critical pieces of our literacy instruction for all readers. Traditional read-alouds require the child to sit and listen without really interacting with the story and the teacher. Using a picture book to teach is an interactive read-aloud. According to the text, "a purposefully, planned instruction provides the teacher time to model the reading process through think-alouds and interactive discussions as he or she helps readers, struggling or otherwise engage with books in a safe, risk-free environment". I learned that ineractive read-alouds are very critical to literacy instruction. All children, but especially ELLs need to be able to hear several books read aloud to them in English so that they can hear how English sounds (p.98). One of the biggest problems I've had with interactive read-alouds is student getting off topic. This chapter taught me several ways to manage this problem in the class. According to the text, "Books can be mirrors into our selves, our culture, our life experiences, and our community. Children need books that reflect who they are as people and that reflect what is happening in our world, our school, and our daily lives. Children need to see themselves in the literature they read and that is read to them". On page 102, there is a list of tips for an effective think-aloud. I found that making sure the texts are interesting, engaging, and a good match to be most effective in helping students to be able to stay on topic during the interactive read-alouds. I really like the idea of teaching the students how to "turn and talk". Turning and talking to a partner allows all the students to participate in preparing to read and gives them a chance to connect to the book personally as they activate and share their prior knowledge (p. 104).

Chapter 7, I Thought I knew How to Teach Reading, but Whoa, focuses on struggling readers at the emergent level who need lots of support as they learn to take on the earliest strategic actions (Johnson, p. 108). I really enjoyed reading this chapter because it was very informative of teaching teachers how to teach: directionality, voice/ print matching, phonemic awareness, early self-monitoring, and early fluency. The part of the chapter that was most informative to me was page 120, Phonemic Awareness I previously was confused on the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness. Phonics is the relationship between written and spoken sounds and letters. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of distinct sounds and that these sounds can be manipulated. On page 120, there is a visual use that shows the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics Phonemic awareness refers to hearing and noticing things about the sounds (ears), and being able to manipulate the sounds (mouth), but it does not include being able to identify letters (eyes) (Johnson, p. 120). The most shocking fact I learned from this chapter is that, "The federal government's research warns against too much emphasis on phonemic awareness. In fact, as little as five hours of training a year is more effective than programs that use more than eighteen hours of training in a year (85)" (Johnson, page 121). By the time a child is in the first grade, phonemic awareness should only be targeting students who really need it. According to the text, "Children who have severe issues with letter identification can be taught how to look at print by sorting and manipulating magnetic letters based on features: curvy letters, letters made with sticks, letters with circle parts, and so on".

Chapter 8 ,Comprehension: The Bottom Line, examines the thinking and the teaching behind comprehension strategy instruction (p.133). This chapter taught me that comprehension strategies in reading don't stop in elementary; it's a prolonged learning strategy. According to the text, "In order to have an efficient and integrated reading process system, the child must self-initiate the strategies, using them when he or she deems necessary to understand a text or solve a problem while reading".   I found the Gradual Release of Responsibility chart to be most effective in helping to see what the students can apply on their own. The teachers perform the modeling, shared demonstration, and guided practice part of the chart. The students are responsible for the independence part of the chart.

What You Should Know About Interactive Read-Alouds and Difficulties That May Arise When Teaching Reading (Ch. 6&7)

It's important to remember to read a wide variety of books to students. Using those picture books to teach is called an interactive read-aloud. "An effective interactive read-aloud has children talking before, during, and after reading" (Johnson & Keier). In order for students to construct ideas, negotiate meanings, and develop independent thought, it's important for students to talk about their thinking. Inviting students to talk during interactive read-alouds helps keep them engaged in the book. There are a few things to think of or do before or during an interactive read-aloud. First, before reading, it's important to build background knowledge in order for students to focus on what the book is going to be about. Second, when students are able to talk to a partner, "they have a chance to connect to the book personally as they share their prior knowledge" (Johnson & Keier). Interactive read-alouds allows teachers to model what readers do and how they think. "Multiple experiences such as these establish a solid foundation for children as they become independent readers and thinkers" (Johnson & Keier).

Interactive read-alouds model for all students, even those who are struggling. Teachers have to make sure to find the strengths of all students. Directionality, thinking strategies, phonics, phonemic awareness, self-monitoring, and fluency are all important to focus on in order for students to be successful. Thinking about reading allows for the student to anticipate what the story might be about and to predict the story line. It also allows them to search and gather from the pictures to make meaning. It's also important to make sure that the students are able to self-monitor. The earlier the child can self-monitor, the faster he or she will be able to become a fluent reader. As a teacher, it's important to reinforce any checking or confirming behavior. The book also listed many suggestions for teachers if they are feeling overwhelmed. These include observing another teacher, asking for help, and celebrating every learning achievement that the struggling student makes. Challenging students will help make you a stronger literacy teacher. After gaining experience and knowledge, you will figure out what is right for your students.