Helping Struggling Readers

Synthesis:

Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas:

Chapter 5 discusses the importance of understanding the reading identities of the students in our classroom. Students often get stuck in categories: good readers, average readers, or poor readers. This can affect the way that students are treated in the classroom by teachers and peers, and this reading identity can also affect how students see themselves. "How students understand themselves as readers plays a significant role in their reading development" (Page 85). The goal is for all of our students to have positive reading identities. Positive reading identities will likely motivate students in the classroom and encourage them to participate in discussions. The text offered suggestions for teachers to use in their classroom to help students improve their view of themselves as readers:

• Learn how students identify themselves as readers and how they would like to improve 
• We need to ask students questions or ask them to provide written responses about their reading abilities.
• Create instruction that works to achieve the goals the students have for themselves and the goals we have for them 
• Celebrate and tackle reading struggles head-on in the classroom 
• Students should know that comprehension difficulties are a usual part of reading and nothing to be embarrassed about.
• Have classroom discussions about reading difficulties and how students could work through them 
• Students can put these strategies in practice and share what they learned in a future discussion.

Chapter 15 focuses on how to help students comprehend textbooks. It is no secret that textbooks can provide some difficulties for students when it comes to reading and taking meaning from them. "Adolescents themselves describe textbook reading as "just hard and really boring"" (Page 267). Many students are not motivated by textbook reading because they do not know effective strategies to comprehend the often dense text. They also do not understand a deeper purpose to the reading other than reading for a grade. The text offered strategies for teachers to help these students gain meaning from textbooks:

• Involve students in prereading activities 
• Ask students questions to get them thinking and motivate them to dive into the reading 
• Anticipation guide 
• Problem posing 
• Provide a pop culture bridge 
• Teachers can find a "text twin" such as a newspaper, magazine, or online article that relates to the textbook 
• Invite students to read critically 
• Students think about points of view and possible errors in textbooks 
• Embedded strategy instruction 
• Teachers make teaching reading strategies for understanding texts a part of the normal content instruction 
• Students need to know when to apply strategies and when to use them 
• Explicit strategy instruction 
• Strategies for comprehending vocabulary and text features 
• Teachers guide the use of these strategies and reinforce them often. 

Chapter 18 discusses how we can use differentiated instruction to help our students who struggle. Differentiated instruction means that we as teachers need to vary our instruction depending on the student to help meet their academic needs. This requires specific planning and a clear sense of the learning goals. Strategies were provided for teachers: 

• Multiple Intelligences: 
• Teachers focus on student's strengths and design instruction to best benefit them. Some students may respond best to reading or listening, some with visuals, or some with moving or acting. 
• Universal Design for Learning: 
• Teachers design their lessons around technology and media to meet all students learning styles and needs in one lesson. Students interact with lessons and texts in multiple ways - listening, reading, writing, and viewing. 
• Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol: 
• Teachers use explicit instruction and provide scaffolding to students to help all students understand content. This model is helpful to ELL students who have a limited English proficiency. 

Fisher and Frey:

This article discussed strategies for struggling readers when it comes to writing. The authors took on a journey with a ninth grade class. Throughout the semester, the instruction shifted from teacher-controlled to student-directed. At the beginning, the class took on the Language Experience Approach - students would share their thoughts on a topic, the teacher would write it on the board, and the students would copy the writing in their notebooks and add their own writing. The class also used Interactive Writing. The students take more of the responsibility with this strategy; the students write the words on the board and it is repeated by the class. Writing models was another strategy that was used - using existing writing to help students with new writing. The students gradually moved to independent writing.

Responses:

(text to self)
I wish I had more teachers who worked to make reading more motivating. Especially textbook reading can be very disinteresting in high school. I love the idea of working to make the text interesting and motivating students to want to read and learn.

(text to text)
Chapter 15 discussed explicit strategy instruction. This was discussed heavily when we talked about different types of disciplinary texts.

(text to world)
I think that child "labels" are a big problem in today's schools. We put children into categories in what they can and cannot do. I really enjoyed the section about improving students' reading identities. It makes a big difference to encourage students and not limit them.

Questions:
What technology do you use to differentiate instruction?

Do you ever discuss pop culture in your classroom by using a "pop culture bridge"?

Thanks :)