Recovering the Struggling Reader

1. Recovering the Struggling Reader Debra K. Nicholson Hillcrest Elementary Morristown, Tennessee

2. Recovering Lee Every child is more than a student on an attendance list….or a statistic to be counted for a grade level promotion. Every child has a face….a family…a name. His name was Lee.

3. Characteristics of a Good Reader • They search for links between the items. • They relate new discoveries to old knowledge. • They search for relationships which order the complexity of print and therefore simplify it. • They solve their reading problems by using theories of the world and their theories of written languages.

4. Characteristics of Poor Readers • They are limited to the knowledge of letters and sounds. • They have poor book handling skills. • They are unable to one to one match. • The operations which they have tried to carry out have not brought order to the complexity, and they have often become passive in their confusion.

5. Principles for Recovering Students If we attend to individual children as they work, and if we focus on the progressions in learning that occur over time, our detailed observations can provide feedback to our instruction.

6. Knowing the Child What letters do they know? What sounds do they know? What words do they know? Do they have good book handling skills? What is their instructional text level? Known and unknown?

7. Book Choices • Choose very carefully…. • Select an appropriate text, one that will be supportive but with a few problems to solve. • Take language and meaning into account when choosing a book. • Select a book that is well in the child’s control. (use words and letters he knows or can get to by using their present strategies) • There should be a minimum of a few things to learn. (We want the child to feel successful, not bogged down with the unknown.)

8. Good Book Introductions • Good book introductions are important because they give children access to a new book. We need to think of a new book introduction as a conversation between two people. For the listener to understand the conversation, the speaker must help the listener to develop a context for the conversation. There are several factors a teacher should include: *Draw the child’s attention to the important ideas *Discuss the pictures *Give opportunities for the child to hear the new words which they will have to guess from * Students should know what the story is about before they begin reading

9. Why Prompt? • To shape up and improve the processing of information on continuous text • To direct students’ attention to things they overlook • To help students be aware of the strategies that they may need to use when reading • To help students become independent readers • To help secure early strategies so that the reader can attend to other things when reading

10. Teacher’s Role for Prompting • Prompt to the error, i.e., prompt to a helping way that directs the child’s attention straight to the information needed to solve the problem • Give the child some information. This is not the same as telling the child the word, but like direct prompting to the error. It provides the child with a good model of what to attend to next. • Prompt for the type of information you want the child to attend to: meaning, structure, and/or visual cues. • Avoid too much prompting/talking because it interferes with the development of independent problem solving.

11. Recovery Procedures:Strategies used on Text • Early strategies are very important because through them the child comes to control their visual attention to print. These early strategies give the child a means of checking to see if he is attending to the right part of the page. They are: *Directional Movement *One to one matching *Locating known and unknown words

12. Strategies for Searching Cues • The teacher should pay particular attention to many kinds of information which young readers must learn to look for. *Meaning Cues (use picture cues/meaning of the story) *Structure Cues (Does it sound right?) *Visual Cues (Does the word look right?)

13. Rereading • Sometimes students need to be prompted to reread so that they can put in place one or more of the following cues: *Think about the meaning of the story. *Get mouth ready for the unknown word.

14. Self Monitoring • After early strategies are in place move on to the more difficult strategies. *Praise self monitoring attempts whether they are successful or not. *Encourage recognition of letter sequences. (Say, “What would you expect to see at the beginning?...at the end?”) * Ask them to check as you uncover the word. (Ask, “Were you right?”) Do after both correct and incorrect words. Then ask the student, (“How do you know?”) after correct words.

15. Cross Checking • When a child can monitor his own reading and can search for and use structure or meaning or sound cues or visual cues, begin to encourage them to check one kind of cue against another. *It could be….but look at….. *Insert possible words so that the child can confirm the response using some letter knowledge. Say, (“Does it look right and sound right to you?”)

16. Self-Correction • This is when a child corrects their own mistakes by using one or more cues. *Say, “I like the way you found what was wrong all by yourself.” • Allow time for self-correction. The child must take the initiative to fix his own mistakes. *Say, “You made a mistake on this page, can you find it?” This places the responsibility on the child.

17. Main Goal: Self Extending System • The child monitors his own reading, searches for cues in word sequence, in meaning, and in letter sequences. • The child can discover new things for himself/herself. • The child self corrects by taking the initiative for making cues match, or getting new words right.

18. Concluding Remarks • As teachers it is our job to know our students so that we can help the struggling readers in our class. I have touched on a few of many strategies that can be used. Our goal as educators is to aim to produce independent readers.