Struggling Readers 3rd Grade and Up

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Struggling Readers3rd Grade and Up

• Darlene Bleier
• Katie Caldwell
• Jackie Mascara
• Yvette Wilder

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FACT

• More than eight million students in grades 4-12
  read below grade level according to the National
  Center for Education Statistics in 2005.
• Only 31 of Americas eighth grade students and
  roughly the same percentage of twelfth graders
  meet the National Assessment of Educational
  Progress standard of reading proficiency for
  their grade level. (NCES, 2005, 2003)

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Through this presentation

• You will be able to identify
• Characteristics of a Struggling Reader
• Interventions
• Resources

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FACT

• If students are to be truly prepared for college,
  work, and citizenship, they cannot settle for a
  modest level of proficiency in reading and
  writing.
• Content area literacy instruction must be a
  cornerstone of any movement to build high-quality
  secondary schools.

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According to The Alliance for Excellent Education

• Without ongoing literacy instruction, students
  who are behind in reading when they enter the
  middle grades likely will never catch up.
• Even college-bound students often struggle with
  more advanced literacy skills.

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Some Considerations Associated with Struggling
Readers

• There are many factors related to reading
  difficulties, but are not necessarily causes.
• The most common include
• Environmental factors (home and school)
• Social factors
• Emotional factors
• Physical factors
• Cultural factors

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Environmental Factors Home

• Language development is greatly influenced by the
  childs home experience with a parent (National
  Reading Panel, 2000)
• Studies that compare good and poor readers show
  that good readers are more likely to have
  favorable home environments (Abrams and Kaslow,
  1987 Hart Risley, 1995 2002 Whitman, 2000)

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Home Continued

• A favorable home environment typically has
• Sufficient bonding with a parent or parent figure
  in infancy years
• Safety (low-risk environment) physical and
  emotional
• Intellectual stimulation through books and
  conversation
• General emotional health and encouragement of a
  good self concept (someone they can count on)

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Environmental Factors School

• Gender differentiations
• Remedial stigma (high performing students tend to
  shun lower performing students (Wong Donahue,
  2002)
• Inadequate or inappropriate diagnosis and
  instruction
• School district provisions

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Social Factors

• Relationships with peers
• Relationships with authority figures
• Confidence and participation some innate,
  extrinsic

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Emotional Factors

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Hostile-aggressive behavior
• Learned helplessness
• Learning Block
• Low self-esteem

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Physical Factors

• Hearing loss
• Visual impairment
• Neurological dysfunction

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Cultural Factors

• As of 2002, nearly 17 of all children in this
  country were considered at poverty level
• Language barriers (ELL)
• Impaired oral and written language development

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A Day in the Life of a Struggling Reader

• Imagine you were required to speak Italian,
  Arabic, and Russian in the morning, followed by
  French, Swahili, and Spanish in the afternoon.
• For struggling adolescent readers, thats what
  it seems like to move from one subject to the
  next. From math to English to history to science
  to civics, each content area has its own
  vocabulary, textual formats, stylistic
  conventions, and ways of understanding,
  analyzing, interpreting, and responding to words
  on the page.
• Alliance for Excellent Education (2006).
  Reading and Writing in the Academic Content
  Areas. Issue Brief.

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In groups of four

• Picture a science class of twenty-five students
  from very diverse backgrounds- different social
  classes, different ethnicities, and varying
  achievement levels. Many of the students
  struggle with text materials. Describe some
  classroom strategies you might use to respond to
  struggling readers while maintaining high
  standards of content learning.

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• What does a child experiencing reading difficulty
  look like?

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Profiles of Students Experiencing Reading
Difficulty

• Lets review what struggling readers look like at
  each grade level.
• Remember
• Students dont suddenly struggle once they reach
  third grade.
• They have often been struggling since the primary
  grades.

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Kindergarten

• Miscalls or confuses letter names
• Cannot get letter-sound correspondences
• Invented spelling is indecipherable
• Can comprehend texts read aloud, but tends to
  avoid reading independently
• Showing signs of avoidance and frustration
• Concepts about print very limited

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First Grade

• Recognizes letter names in isolation, but still
  cannot get letter-sound correspondences
• Has memorized some sight words, but unable to
  apply decoding skills
• Attempts to sound out words but cannot blend
  sounds
• Guesses randomly at unknown words or relies on
  pictures
• Uses first letter decoding skills
• Comprehension texts read aloud but reluctant to
  read independently
• Fluency very poor reading is belabored and slow
  with frequent errors
• Writing is immature invented spelling resembles
  that of a Kindergarteners

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Second - Third Grade

• Inability to keep up is more noticeable
• Poor decoding skills fluency is poor and not
  grade appropriate
• Has memorized lots of words but cannot decode
  unknown ones
• Signs of frustration and avoidance of independent
  reading more apparent
• Comprehension and vocabulary knowledge starting
  to skip even when being read to
• Writing lacks appropriate elaboration, contains
  many spelling and conventions errors, and
  vocabulary knowledge and usage is poor

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Intermediate Grades

• Decoding and fluency poor students tend to hide
  when having to read aloud and/or make numerous
  errors sometimes unknown to the student
• Comprehension is to some degree compensated for
  but is superficial at best student demonstrates
  difficulty remembering and articulating major
  text ideas
• Writing is constrained and often brief and
  undeveloped little evidence of elaboration or
  interest in writing
• Rarely reads independently selects easy books
  or expository books for pictures more than for
  content

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Middle and High School Grades

• Does not complete text-book assignments or needs
  a great deal of time and support
• Rarely reads and does not write well
• Still showing difficulty with decoding and
  fluency miscalls a lot of words when reading
  aloud
• Comprehension and interpretation of text is
  superficial and often wrong
• Behavior manifestations of frustration and
  embarrassment
• Vocabulary repertoire is poor and resembles that
  of an elementary grade student
• Little knowledge of authors and genre

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Other Characteristics of Struggling Readers in
Middle and High School

• They sometimes have not mastered basic knowledge
  and strategies required for decoding unfamiliar
  words
• They are almost always less fluent readerstheir
  sight word vocabularies many thousands of words
  smaller than average readers
• Usually know the meanings of fewer words
• Usually have less conceptual/factual knowledge
• Are almost always less skilled in using
  strategies to enhance comprehension or repair it
  when it breaks down
• Will typically not enjoy reading or choose to
  read for pleasure

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The Fourth Grade Slump

• Some students, especially those from
  socioeconomic disadvantage, may read adequately
  from kindergarten to third-grade but suddenly
  begin to struggle when they reach fourth-grade.
  This phenomenon has been referred to as the
  fourth-grade slump.
• In fourth-grade, texts become more complex and
  abstract and contain language and concepts that
  are more challenging.
• In subsequent grades, as texts become more and
  more difficult and supply less and less
  contextual support

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Causes of the Fourth Grade Slump

• Lack of fluency and automaticity which tends to
  result, ultimately, in childrens reading less
  and avoiding more difficult materials
• Vocabulary words in text shift from high
  frequency to less common words.
• Too many difficult words and technical terms in
  content area texts negatively effect
  comprehension.
• Many upper-elementary grade teachers do not have,
  substantial knowledge of how to teach reading,
  (Grosso de Leon, 2002, p. 1).

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• At the secondary level, the responsibility for
  teaching reading and writing often seems to
  belong to no one in particular.

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• In a typical high-poverty urban school,
  approximately half of incoming ninth-grade
  students read at a sixth-or seventh-grade level
  or below.

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• How Can We Close the Reading Gap for Middle and
  High School Students?

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Interventions Tips For Teachers

• Make sure you scaffold
• Vary reading levels
• Differentiate instruction
• Explicitly teach reading strategies
• Provide students with reading choices

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Fluency Interventions

• Partner Reading
• Fluency Word Cards
• Word Folder
• And the answer is
• Repeated Reading
• Readers Theater

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Decoding Interventions - Strategies

• Chunking
• Word Patterns
• Analogy
• Sight Words

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Decoding Interventions - Activities

• Jumping Syllables
• The Name Game
• Riming Race
• Mother May I?

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Comprehension Interventions

• Story Mapping
• Text Mapping
• Chunking The Text
• Answering the 7 Ws
• Word Study Boggle
• Tic-Tac-Toe
• Reciprocal teaching
• Questioning the Author
• Think-alouds
• QARs (question answer response)

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Seeking Help for a Struggling Reader Seven Steps
for Teachers

• Get to know the student
• Get to know the family
• Encourage good literacy habits at home
• Tap into the specialist and resources in your own
  building
• Reflect on your own research-based teaching
• Advocate for the student through school-based and
  outside resources
• Stay informed

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1. Get to know the student

• Find out the interests of your struggling reader
  and incorporate those into your teaching
  strategies and the materials you select.
• Using past records or the students cumulative
  folder, find out more about the students history
  of school success.

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2. Get to know the family

• Helping a child learn to read is a community
  effort, and sometimes it requires sensitivity on
  the part of the teacher.
• It is important to reach ESL families, they may
  require special accommodations, like a translator
  or materials sent home in their native language.

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3. Encourage good literacy habits at home

• Support family reading time by allowing students
  to borrow books overnight or for a few days.
• Offer suggestions to parents for fun, easy things
  that they can do at home to support literacy
  development.

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4. Tap into the specialists and resources in your
own building

• Schedule some time to discuss your struggling
  student with the speech/language pathologist.
• Meet with your reading specialist.
• Special education teachers have a wealth of
  knowledge regarding teaching dyslexia, learning
  disabilities, and the special education process.

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5. Reflect on your own research-based teaching

• Good beginning instruction teaches children how
  to identify words, to understand what they read,
  to achieve fluency, and to develop a love for
  reading that will motivate them and stay with
  them for the rest of their lives.
• Most importantly, good reading instruction is
  tailored to the individual needs of students.

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6. Advocate for the student through school-based
and outside resources

• Many schools have tutoring programs in place for
  the struggling reader.
• Tutoring often takes place before and after
  school.

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7. Stay informed

• Whether youre new to the profession or an expert
  teacher, its important to keep current with
  whats going on in the fields of reading and
  special education.

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Some Major Recommendations given by the CORE
Literacy Leadership Summit, March 2006

• Direct, explicit comprehension instruction
• Effective instructional principles embedded in
  content
• Motivation and self-directed learning
• Text-based collaborative learning, lots of
  opportunities for meaningful discussion
• Diverse, interesting text at many levels
• Intensive writing
• Extended time for literacy

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Direct Instruction in Comprehension

• Teachers explicitly explain and model a
  comprehension strategy
• Guided practice with feedback with discussion
• Independent practice and review, with further
  discussion
• Gerston, R., Fuchs, L., Williams, J., Baker,
  S. (2001). Teaching reading comprehension
  strategies to students with learning
  disabilities A review of research. Review of
  Educational Research, 7, 279-320.

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Resources

• Florida State University and Florida Center for
  Reading Research www.fcrr.org
• National Reading Panel www.nationalreadingpanel.or
  g
• Alliance for Excellent Education www.all4ed.org
• Literacy Instruction in the Content Area
  Getting to the Core of Middle and High School
  Improvement
• FactSheet, February 2006
• Issue Brief, June 2006

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• Heller, R. Greenleaf, L. (2007). Literacy
  instruction in the content areas Getting to the
  core of middle and high school improvement.
  Washington, DC Alliance for Excellent Education.
• Vacca, Richard T., and Jo Anne L. Vacca. Content
  Area Reading. 9th ed. Boston Pearson Education
  Inc., 2008. 34-66.

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• Jennings, Joyce H., JoAnne S. Caldwell, and Janet
  W. Lerner. Reading Problems. 5th ed. Boston
  Pearson Education Inc., 2006. 26-27.
• CORE Literacy Leadership Summit, March 2006
  http//www.scoe.org/reading/docs/torgesen.pdf
• Department of Education and Early Childhood
  Development http//www.education.vic.gov.au/studen
  tlearning/teachingresources/english/literacy/conce
  pts/4kcfourthgrade.htm

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• National Center Education Statistics, 2005
  http//nces.ed.gov/
• Alliance for Excellent Education (2006). Reading
  and Writing in the Academic Content Areas. Issue
  Brief.
• Gerston, R., Fuchs, L., Williams, J., Baker, S.
  (2001). Teaching reading comprehension
  strategies to students with learning
  disabilities A review of research. Review of
  Educational Research, 7, 279-320.

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• Essential Reading Strategies for the struggling
  reader www.tea.state.tx.us/reading/products/essen
  tial.pdf
• Interventions for struggling adolescent readers
  http//www.adlit.org/article/19750
• 10 Ways to Teach and Support Adolescent Readers
  http//findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4009/is_20
  0710/ai_n21033481/pg_5?tagartBodycol1
• Seeking Help for Struggling Readers
  www.readingrockets.org

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