hit or miss continues

Well, my urban learners session was affirming (hey! that's my kids!) but not particularly enlightening. A lot of recognizing my own students' behaviors, descriptions of the urban learning environment, relating to the broken discipline system, and generally feeling like someone out there is going through the same things I do on a regular basis! But they didn't really tell me anything I don't already know.

I did just get out of another session run by a Pearson rep which was actually useful. Short, to-the-point, and gives me ideas to take home that don't require a lot of investment. I'll take it. It is also good to know that some companies out there are publishing for kids who are not on level from a vocab/reading perspective. And by that I mean, not just publishing reading intervention programs or reading material, but publishing subject area texts for secondary education on elementary reading levels. A big part of the reason that my class text is pretty useless to me as a teaching tool is because the vocabulary and reading comprehension skills of my students are not yet up to the level of the book. The text is abstract and the vocabulary is difficult for students who can barely read. Even when the text uses concrete examples and modeling, the instructions are too difficult to interpret for my students. So I am forced to improvise. Wouldn't it be grand to have a text written on a lower reading level with all the same content?