When guiding learners, teachers can help struggling readers by focusing on vital reading components to ensure that they gain essential skills for effective reading. The most vital reading components to assist struggling readers include comprehension, interpretation, and analysis of phonics and the structure of texts.
Essential components of reading
Comprehension is an essential component of reading. To help struggling learners, the teacher can focus on important aspects of reading like comprehension and understanding phonemics, sounds, and words that are related to the struggling reader. For instance, the teacher ensures Mandela in this video achieves phonemic awareness by spelling the word blot using sounds (Reading Rockets, 2015). Therefore, the teacher in this video uses familiar terms that make the reader comprehend what they mean, creating a long-lasting memory and impact on the learner.
The teacher also uses phonics, which is the other essential reading component. Phonics helps the reader to understand the relationship existing between sounds and letters and ensures they gain the ability to interpret the words they read. The teacher allows the student to practice phonics through spelling and reading activities. For instance, the learner practices and reads the word sat in this video.
Similarly, using familiar words also makes interpretation easier for the struggling learner. The teacher can focus on interpretation by helping learners understand where, when, and how to use the words they have learned how to read (Reading Rockets, 2015). Since different words can have multiple meanings, using familiar phrases helps struggling learners understand where, when, and how to use particular words, helping them interpret the words accurately, and facilitating learning.
Analysis as another critical aspect of reading can be achieved by making the struggling learners understand the different components of the words they are learning. These components can include sounds, stress, and tonal variations when spelling them. To achieve this, teachers should help their students understand why the words are pronounced the way they are pronounced (Reading Rockets, 2015). For instance, stress and tonal variations can alter how a word is spelled, and its meaning. Helping learners understand how to break words down into sequences of sounds will help struggling learners understand how to analyze words.
Identifying reading standard(s) in the lesson
The teacher in this video addresses meets numerous reading standards in this lesson because teaching struggling learners needs a differentiated and targeted strategy. For example, the teacher in this lesson provides individualized and explicit instructions. The learner receives differentiated instructions based on specific needs and unique challenges. Instructions in this lesson are designed to provide extra support, materials, and modifications. Also, the teacher uses multisensory approaches when teaching this learner by selectively choosing vocabulary that is sensible, understandable, and common. Words like blot and sat are common vocabularies of the English language (Reading Rockets, 2015). Using relatable and familiar vocabulary helped achieve the vocabulary reading standard.
Improving the Instructions
The teacher can improve instructions for the learner by using collaboration, reflective practice, and parental involvement. These strategies can help the teacher in understanding the learners’ social backgrounds which will help the teacher familiarize with common terms/words used by the learners in their normal conversations (Reading Rockets, 2015). Understanding the children’s social and communication contexts will help the teacher select the most appropriate vocabulary to help the learners.
Increasing one-on-one engagements with the learners will also help the teacher improve the instructions. Increased one-on-one interactions between the teacher and the learner will help the learner understand some aspects of reading like tonal variations, stress, spelling, and pronunciation as the teacher spells them. The engagements will help the teacher to provide feedback on learners’ performance and expectations.
Reference
Reading Rockets, (2015). Helping Struggling Readers. https://youtu.be/4MV4F_IFFQw
write