Even
Hockey
Players Read: Boys, Literacy and
Learning
By David Booth
This book is great for specific strategies for working with male reluctant learners. I particularly enjoyed the recommended book lists for boys of all ages and abilities. Parents would appreciate the “Checklist for Parents” giving a list of ways parents can work to help their male children to become strong readers and writers from a young age. Some strategies include: model reading a variety of sources to your child (newspapers, periodicals, novels, non-fiction, etc.) and make reading enjoyable, not a chore, by changing your attitude.
After reading this book, I feel validated in what I already do in my classroom. Since the majority of Special Education students are male and reluctant readers, it makes sense to put many of these strategies to work with my students. A few of the strategies I currently use that this book espouses are using comics with text, making tasks practical (letter writing, filling out applications, etc.), using high interest reading materials that the students get to choose, modeling fluent oral reading, and reading a variety of works with the class