I have a few struggling readers in my classroom and I would like some ideas to engage them more in reading. They are reluctant to read because they are not fluent. We work on decoding skills to help them with unfamiliar words but I am open to there ideas.
First thing to do is ask them "What upsets you when it comes to reading?" Next find out if the problem is lack of motivation or do they really have a problem in reading itself. If it is a lack of motivation, get them a book about something that they enjoy but make sure it has lots of pictures in it. Start slow and work them up to longer passages and less pictures. If they really have a problem, refer them to the reading specialist for more help.
ReplyDeleteMany of my students go to the reading intervention teacher. She works with them for a hour each day on fluency reading and foundational skills. One reason for them struggling is because they struggle in the phonics and phonemic awareness areas. Believe it or not, many of them mispronounce words. Because of the mispronunciation, they struggle with the spelling. I do work on syllables and segmenting words with them as well.
DeleteIt sounds like your students need a lot of help with phonics since they aren't fluent readers. When teaching phonics, make sure that you teach explicitly and across all subject areas. If you're teaching science or math and notice a word that has a phonics skill that you're teaching for the week, ask that child what sounds he/she hears in that word. Ways to help strengthen blending skills can include: computer sites such as starfall.com and abcmouse.com where the students can hear sounds and words being read to them and games that change one letter to make a new word and focusing on words families.
ReplyDeleteI have a few struggling readers in my classroom as well. One thing I like to do is repeated readings. This way, once they have mastered a text, they feel much more confident in their reading skills. Like you mentioned, I have a lot of mispronunciations in my classroom. I like to blame this on the southern accent, so I do a lot of read alouds where I model fluent reading with correct pronunciation of words.
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