When Kids Can't Read: Chapter 10

I thought this was an interesting chapter, because it focused on an area that most high school teachers don't often think of.  I thought it was important that she mentioned the importance of fluency.  I thought Beers made a good point when she said that readers can't focus on comprehension if they spend all their time focusing on decoding.  Therefore, as teachers it's important to make sure our students are fluent readers.  I thought Beers suggested some good strategies for teaching fluency and automaticity.  I like her suggestion of reading out loud to a class, because this can be a useful strategy for a class of students with mixed ability levels.  For students that need help with automaticy, this will give them extra practice at hearing the words, for students that don't need this help, they can learn from the teacher's reading and practice their listening.  In my opinion, it's harder to listen to a text than to read a text and efficient readers can benefit from this.  I also liked Beers idea of using high-frequency word lists and word walls.  However, the only problem I see with this is that the strategies seem a bit "elementary" for high school students.  If high school teachers use these strategies, they should be sure to present them in such a way to high schools students can identify with them and not feel too babied.  All in all, I thought her strategies were useful and will be helpful in teaching students to improve their reading fluency and automaticity.