Teaching Reading with Literature Chapter 3: Assessing Dependent Readers Needs

This chapter showed a lot of examples of "not so good" readers. I remember back to high school and reading out loud in class when she gave the example of Mike who struggled with decoding and comprehension. There were a lot of kids in my classes who were like that. Then there was also always people like Sharamee, those that the teacher always called on because they read really fast, but when they were done they couldn't really tell you what they read. These are all examples of dependent readers who need a teacher's help to complete the reading process. Once the author figured out what each student needed, she was able to help them work on those needs.


My favorite example was that of Amy who thought she hated reading because she never had a choice of what she could read and was always told to read what everyone else was reading. This made me think of my brother who is now a Senior in high school. He always told me that he hated reading. He comes home from the first day of school this year with a book about a quarter of the way read. I was completely amazed, even though I knew who his teacher would be and that they would have many choices of books, I didn't know he would actually find one he liked. It's about the fourth week of school and he's already on the sequel and instead of staying up late watching TV, he's been reading. This just proved to me that everyone can eventually be a successful reader.