The Missouri Reader Vol. 36, Issue 1 | Page 49

models from the black community (President
Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King). His
emulation of his role models also drove him to
read biographies about these people -- a genre
usually rated low in preference by middle school
students (Worthy, Moorman & Turner, 1999).
We believe Dan‘s reading competence will
improve with his teacher‘s fostering of his
reading interests.
A majority of the students (five out of six)
stated that reading is hard for them for various
reasons. We recommend making an
individualized instructional plan for each student
and establishing classroom practices such as a
workshop approach that will support individual
needs. For example, Ben stated that reading
becomes more difficult when he reads aloud
because he makes more mistakes. To address
Ben‘s reading fluency issues his teacher could use
modeled and repeated readings in a variety of
ways in his/her classroom such as read aloud,
shared reading, echo reading, partner reading,
tape assisted reading, choral reading, and reader‘s
theater. Ben‘s teacher might also consider using
miscue analysis or even retrospective miscue
analysis (e.g., Goodman, Watson & Burke, 2005)
to analyze the mistakes or miscues Ben makes.
Ben could learn to ask himself questions such as:
Am I making sense? Does my reading sound like
language? By answering these questions and
closely looking at (or listening to) his reading,
Ben may come to understand that the goal of
reading is constructing meaning rather than
stressing accuracy. Knowing the goal of reading
can be beneficial for other stud ents as well.
Nathan, for instance, judged reading by grades
(i.e., As and Bs stand for good reading and Cs and
Ds for bad reading). His view of reading can be
broadened by being exposed to other behaviors
that a good reader would do, such as reading for
meaning, making text-text, text-self, and textworld connections, and visualizing the scene in
one‘s head. Dan, who considered reading is hard
because when he reads too fast he can‘t
understand what he is reading, needs to know to
slow down when the text does not make sense to
him. Meanwhile, his teacher could provide him

with comprehension strategies such as jotting
down his responses, comments, and questions on
sticky notes and putting them next to the
corresponding texts. Dan‘s teacher could also
have regular conferences with him about the
books he is reading and use activities such as
reciprocal teaching, book clubs, or literature
circles to engage him in discussions where he has
opportunities to construct meaning from the
texts he is reading.
We also noted matches and mismatches
between what students prefer to read and what
are used for reading instruction. Websites,
magazines, manuals, book series, fiction, and
factual books were voted high on both counts.
These materials should continue to be included in
the reading instruction in these classrooms and
included as well in classroom libraries and
interest centers. A lot of these categories (e.g.,
book series, fiction, magazines) however, cover a
variety of topics. Teachers need to take into
account other information from the interview to
pin down exact titles or topics in each category.
Meanwhile, we observed some noticeable
mismatches. For example, song lyrics were
favored by all of the students. However, only one
teacher was reported to use them to teach
reading and another one to use them sometimes.
Poetry, on the contrary, was chosen by two
students but by five teachers. Instructional
practices need to adjust to respond to student
choices.
We realize that this study only represents a
small number of students and findings cannot be
generated beyond them. We also realize that
observations of student reading behavior and
teacher instruction will provide additional
insights into our research questions. However,
we do recognize the importance of what these
students have shared with us. Each of these
students had a good understanding of their
reading challenges and they were able to compare
their reading performance to that of their
classmates. They could articulate what they
thought about reading and what made reading
hard for them. They were also clear about what
they liked to read and what made a reading
© The Missouri Reader, 36 (1) p.49