7 strategies to use with struggling readers
Find out how teachers can use these six methods to help students who are having difficulty reading in the classroom.
Have a student in your class who is having trouble reading? You aren’t exactly sure how to meet his or her requirements, are you? Continue reading to discover seven different approaches that can be taken to help students who are having difficulties reading.
1. SCAFFOLD
Reading successfully is essential for anyone who is having trouble with it. If you set the bar too high, there is no chance of success. If you set the bar too low, it comes across as demeaning. The student needs to be presented with a suitable obstacle that he or she is capable of overcoming with relatively little assistance. This does not automatically imply that the text needs to be modified in any way. Perhaps they require more than one reading of the same piece of writing. Perhaps they would benefit from reading with someone else so that they can discuss the language. The enhancement of a reader’s sense of self-worth is the component that matters the most in this context.
2. EMBRACE DIVERSITY
When children are learning to read, it is essential to provide as many opportunities for success as is humanly possible. The educator ought to take as many steps as are necessary while remaining discrete and sensitive in order to enable the student who is having difficulty reading to participate in classroom discussions about the stories being read. What are some ways that we can encourage this? The children’s familiarity with the text will increase as a result, and they will have more time to independently and calmly process the events that take place in the story when they are given the opportunity to listen to the text beforehand. This will allow the reader who is having difficulty to participate in answering questions about the text along with their peers.
3. ALLOW PREPARATION OF ORAL READING
Reading aloud in front of others, especially in a public setting, can be one of the most terrifying experiences for a person who struggles with reading. Make sure to give students enough time to practise their presentations with a voice recorder, a teacher, or a classmate until they feel comfortable enough to deliver them in front of the class.
4. DISCOVER WHAT THE CHILDREN ARE INTERESTED IN
Include a variety of reading material for students to choose from when they are reading on their own in your classroom. Some people aren’t cut out to read fiction novels. There are many different kinds of print and visual texts, such as comics, magazines, and non-fiction books, that can pique the interest of a reluctant reader.
5. MAKE USE OF ACTIVITIES FROM CLOZE
Reading becomes less about identifying printed words and more about using meaning to construct meaning when cloze activities are used with students who have difficulty reading. The first few lines of the text should remain unchanged, but you should delete one of the words. In order to identify the words, students need to make use of their comprehension of the text as well as the sentence structure. It is not necessary for the student to identify the precise word; rather, they should choose a word that is appropriate given the circumstances. It is possible to reveal one letter from the cloze word at a time in order to reduce the number of possible solutions to the puzzle. Proceed with this process intermittently throughout the body of the text. Readers who have trouble comprehending the material should pre-read the passage first and then skip the cloze words. This could be done with a different student, with a pre-recording, or with the instructor.
6. USE ENVIRONMENTAL PRINT
Students who are able to read a sign that says “pharmacy” while walking down the street frequently struggle when the same word is presented to them in written form, such as on a sheet of paper. Students are able to engage in more complex language when they are given the context of individual words, as opposed to what is possible when the words are taken out of context. Putting keywords in various locations around the room can help with contextualising words. In addition to this, students could take pictures of words that they see in their surroundings and add them to a word wall.
7. USE SHARED READING
Reading aloud together is a great way to boost the confidence of students who are having trouble reading. While the instructor is activating the readers’ prior knowledge, they are beginning to recognise possible vocabulary that will be used in the text. The students can participate in the activity whenever they feel comfortable doing so. When there are multiple readings, there are multiple chances for success.