Struggling Readers

Synthesis
Chapter 5
By middle school, students have assumed and assigned themselves reading identities based on the perception of their parents, teachers, and peers rather than themselves, and they live up to the expectation set forth, especially when becoming a better reader means becoming vulnerable and exposing oneself as a struggler who cannot read or comprehend at the same level as one's peers. Few students are willing to accept this social risk and, as a result, do not grow despite their desire to do so. In order to help the "struggling" readers, we must engage them in a discussion that analyzes how they currently perceive themselves as literacy learners and how they would like their identity to change, and we must empower them and encourage literacy growth not by dictating what skills they will work on but by allowing them to voice which skills they want to improve through meaningful discussion. This establishes ownership and by explaining the relationship between lessons and learning goals and students' literacy goals, students are more likely to participate and grow although a shift in literacy identity may take several months. We also must help students understand that misperception, misanalysis, and incomprehension are normal for everyone as they read by providing opportunities to show our own struggles, normalizing difficulties for everyone, creating an environment that encourages discussion, especially ones regarding struggles and difficulties in reading comprehension, and giving students the opportunity to explore and evaluate literacy strategies to help them. Emphasis, therefore, should be on how the students address their struggles, not how they fixed them.
Chapter 15
Textbooks are an excellent source of information, but beyond using them to find basic comprehension answers, few students can successfully navigate them because they are not well-written and students are unable to interact with them. Although research shows that multiple text sources are more effective than the textbook, students must still become experts in textbook literacy through motivation to read the textbook as well as explicit instruction and guided practice.
Engaging Readers Prereading activities, especially anticipation guides, that provide relevance, choice of texts/tasks, an increase in self-efficacy are crucial. Other strategies include establishing problematic perspectives, comprehension canopy, text twin to bridge concepts to popular culture, text sets, and focusing on critical literacy.
Embedded Comprehension Instruction Content-area teachers must focus on textbook reading strategies to develop and support literacy skills in their content through engaging and interactive content-based lessons, such as academic vocabulary analysis and graphic organizers, that also provide strategy modeling instruction. 
Explicit Strategy Instruction Metacognition and a wide variety of literacy strategies are imperative to students becoming successful readers. The following explicit instruction steps can help improve comprehension: name strategy, explain steps and how/when it is useful, think aloud during modeling, and provide opportunities for guided and independent practice. Focusing on text features is also imperative. Once students are familiar with how a textbook is set up, literacy strategies involving vocabulary, text organization, and inferencing are more easily engaged.
Teacher-Gudided Comprehension Teachers must model good reading and explicitly remind students of strategy steps, and they must ensure that students are able to determine importance by identifying main ideas and make inferences. Interactive Reading Guides (one example is a Reading Road Map) allow students to interact with a text through thoughtful interaction and small group discussion while Question-Answer Relationships help students identify main ideas and make inferences through categorizing answers to questions into 2 categories: "In the Text" ("Right There" and "Think and Search") and "In My Head" ("Author and You" and "On My Own").
Gradual Release of Responsibility To ensure success, a strategy must move progressively from explicit instruction to small-group or partner discussion to independent use.
Constant Strategy Reinforcement Vertical (discipline-specific) and/or horizontal (more generic) alignment of target strategies helps ensure successful literacy development in struggling readers and allows one teacher to introduce a strategy while other reinforce it through an RTI approach.
Chapter 18
Multiple intelligences, universal design for learning, and sheltered instruction are three models of differentiated instruction which teachers engage in on a regular basis either by adjusting lessons for different sections of the same class, groups of learners with similar needs, and individual learners to ensure that all students meet an objective. Teachers must modify content, processes, products and assessments to address students' readiness, interests and learning styles through careful planning and clear learning goals. 
Multiple Intelligences This caters to a wide-variety of learners including not only general education students but also ELLs and those with learning disabilities. Teachers must deliver content using different intelligences and provide opportunities for students to create products based on their intelligences.
Universal Design for Learning UDL began as an approach students with cognitive and physical disabilities but has been adapted for all students and promotes high expectations for all learners. The three primary brain networks (recognition, strategic, and affective) are engaged through instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments based on three key principals (multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement) and through the use of technology and media.
Sheltered Instructional Observational Protocol Although SIOP was originally designed for ELLs, it is effective for native speakers as well because it requires teachers to provide scaffolding and explicit instruction through 30 features in 8 components (lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment), and it engages students' background knowledge (building new knowledge, activating prior knowledge, and developing academic vocabulary) to connect prior knowledge and experiences to the content. Flexible grouping and determining essential knowledge are also important parts of SIOP.

Connection
Text-to-self: I did not enjoy history when I was in school despite wanting to primarily because I was not able to connect to and completely understand the textbook. I think I would have been more successful if I had been exposed to different texts instead of the textbook exclusively and if more of my teachers had used strategies similar to those in Chapter 15.
Text-to-Text: None of the strategies presented in these chapters are new. They have been explored in some way or another in our textbooks, especially the content-based strategies, as well as many of the articles we have studied as a faculty.
Text-to-World: I struggle with motivating readers on a daily basis, and I know that the rest of my team struggles with getting students to read and understand their content and textbooks. I have had success with designing lessons and assessments that engage multiple intelligences, and I think it would be interesting to see the other contents try the same.

Questions
1. How do you engage your struggling readers? How much choice do you offer?
2. What type of products/assessments have you created to provide opportunities for all students to be successful?
3. What differentiated strategies have worked best for you?