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Digging deeper
The development of good reading skills is a lifetime pursuit that hopefully begins in infancy. Some people pick up reading easily and seem to have inherent reading comprehension skills. Others labor through early reading and resist reading for pleasure because they don’t seem to “get much out of it.”
In this post we’ll look at some of the struggles of poor readers and what you can do as a parent, teacher, or tutor, to help your students to improve their reading skills and learn to love literature. Poor Readers Struggle with Decoding What exactly is “decoding”? Decoding is the ability to apply what you know about language structures to sounding out unfamiliar words. This is an especially important skill for new readers to develop because they encounter unfamiliar words so often. Students with decoding struggles benefit from reading aloud in a safe setting. They may feel intimidated by reading aloud in front of a group, but reading one-on-one can be an especially good way to find specific decoding problems and address them. For instance, a student might read the word “pheasant” as “peasant” because the “ph” is not recognized as using the /f/ sound. This gives you an opportunity to fill a hole in the student’s understanding that will be helpful every time he comes across “ph” in the future. Practicing spelling can be another good way to help students with decoding problems. Middle and high school students can benefit from spelling tests as much as elementary school students, but spelling is often considered to be a lower-grade activity. Use the vocabulary words in the Tolman Hall study guides for spelling tests, and students will concentrate more on the construction of words. This helps to improve decoding. Poor Readers Often Lack Background Knowledge It can be extremely frustrating to embark on the reading of a book without any background knowledge of the setting, historical events, and other key information. As a teacher or parent, you can help set the stage by talking about the book ahead of time. If the book contains unfamiliar vocabulary, talk about those words before your student gets to them. For example, in Number the Stars, it would be difficult to understand what’s going on without a little background about Europe, World War II, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. Introduce this book by getting out a map and exploring Copenhagen, Denmark. You could even give your students some time to roam around the streets via Google Earth. Explain the issues at stake during World War II and the great dangers faced by European Jews during these years. Explore the map a little more so your student knows where Sweden is and what obstacles there would be if you were trying to travel from Denmark to Sweden. All of this information will help your student to visualize the book’s action and better understand the story. Poor Readers Struggle to Recognize a Text’s Organization Reading an entire novel is difficult for readers who struggle to recognize a text’s overall organization. You can help students to improve these skills by reviewing what has happened so far in the plot. For example, before your student moves on to Chapter 5 of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, review what they’ve read already: TEACHER: “Okay, do you remember what happened to the Logan kids when they were walking to school?” STUDENT: “They got splashed with mud by the bus.” TEACHER: “Right, so then what did they do about it?” STUDENT: “They dug the big hole and the rain made it even bigger and the bus got stuck.” TEACHER: “Good. And then in Chapter 4 we learn about the history of the Logans’ land, right? What did we learn?” STUDENT: “Harlan Granger’s family used to have it, and he wants it back. But if they want it so bad, why did they sell it in the first place?” If this is the way your conversation has gone, you’ll be in a good place to fill a gap in the student’s understanding. Some stories have complex, adult concepts in them (like this one). You may have to spend some time explaining about the loss of value of Confederate money, the need to pay taxes on property, and the harsh realities of the Great Depression. Most kids will not understand these concepts unless an adult explains them. Talking about the story as you go along will help poor readers to stay engaged, and if you’re the one who starts the conversations, they can save face by not always having to admit that they don’t understand something. Poor Readers Don’t Reflect on What They’ve Read Phew. Got through that book. Reading an entire book can feel like climbing a mountain to a struggling reader. Kids who don’t like reading often want nothing more than to return that book to the library and never see it again. But you’ll do them a favor in the long run by encouraging some reflection. It will make connections in their brains that will help make the next mountain climb a little easier. Our Tolman Hall study guides include a variety of end-of-unit projects for this purpose, and many of these projects have little to do with reading and writing. While essays and written research projects are great for some kids, struggling readers may get more out of artistic, scientific, or performance projects. As long as your struggling readers are still thinking about the story, the concepts are still gelling. The story as a whole is still getting some of their attention, and they’re increasing their abilities to hold complicated stories and ideas in their minds. The following are a few end-of-unit project ideas from Tolman Hall study guides:
These and many other projects can give struggling readers an alternative way to connect with the story and continue to ruminate on its themes, characters, plot, and language. For more information about how our study guides can help your struggling readers, get in touch with us at Tolman Hall, or get a copy of our latest study guide for your next unit study.
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