Effective Interventions for Struggling Reader

Post date: Apr 27, 2018 3:17:29 AM

By: Rhyann Carlos D. Balan

Teacher I - Tuyo Elementary School

Many children have problems learning to read because of poor instruction and other factors. We have what we called “interventions” which is not part of the regular school reading instruction that are likely to help the struggling readers.

Students with poor reading skills are becoming more apparent to educators and parents due to the results found on criterion-referenced, high stakes mandatory testing that most schools nationwide have incorporated across grade levels.

The majority of students who are referred for academic concerns and/or have been identified as having a specific learning disability have difficulties in the area of reading. Among the population of students with learning disabilities, an estimated 80%have reading disabilities (Lerner, 1993).

The purpose of providing extra instructional time is also necessary to help children achieve the exceeded levels of literacy that will enable them to be successful in their school tasks. It is not simply to boost early literacy achievement. Given the focus of this action study, we restrict our goal to the primary grades that needs continuous and additional supplementary experiences in the secondary grades as well.

Students must be exposed to rich and rigorous activities inside the class. They must learn the content of reading and understanding what they have read as well as acquire a new set of skills to deal with the increasingly interconnected and technological world.

Now is the time when teachers’ strategies can make a big difference. We have the opportunity to reign and make teaching the profession it ought to be. This is the best time of great challenges and opportunity. Teaching is complex; there is no single pedagogy that can meet the needs and desires of every learner, so that for the sake of learner’s growth and development, Continuous Improvement Plan must be considered.

Continuous Improvement Plan in our school aims to equip the pedagogue with the tools and strategies they need to make gradual improvements in their respective classrooms. And most especially the application of principles for improving school processes considering the needs of every learners in terms of reading development.

Educators work tirelessly to meet the academic needs of all learners. The most important parts of the instruction for struggling learner is the use of the right intervention.

Intervention programs for five components of literacy (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary) are included in our strategy to enhance the reading and comprehension level of our students.

The intervention is supplemental and is meant to enhance the core program for all students and use to prevent and remediate skill deficiency of the students whose reading and learning capabilities are not applicable to his age as a regular student of our school.

The Fuller Method Approach in Reading as instructional materials which means a combination of the alphabet, phonics and whole methods of teaching word recognition.

This technique requires that the beginning reader should have mastered the names and shapes of the letters of the alphabet, adequate vocabulary so that the words used in the Fuller lessons will have meaning for him/her.

There are some effective interventions for struggling readers such as the following:

1. Knowing the Characteristics of students with reading problems

Low ability readers make up the largest number of poor readers. They tend to have lower than average IQ and have below grade level listening comprehension, word recognition, and reading comprehension performance.

Poor readers with word recognition difficulties generally over rely on textual cues such as pictures and other words to identify words in a passage that are unknown to them (Kim & Goetz, 1994).

2. Collaborative team model

Regardless of their diagnostic label, poor readers get poorer without the benefit of effective instruction. This notion is what Stanovich (1986) coined the "Mathew Effects" in reading. In order to prevent the retention of low reading skills, appropriate stake-holders such as the teachers and parents need to initially establish collective efficacy about the relationship between instruction and performance of a children to develop their reading awareness and abilities.

3. Data-based intervention methods

Before describing interventions that help students with word identification and reading comprehension skills, it is imperative to discuss the bases for why some interventions are targeted for implementation over others. Decisions made without systematic data collection may result in targeting inappropriate interventions that further exacerbate students' struggles with reading.

When a student experiences difficulty with reading, professionals and other interested stakeholders (i.e., family members) should work in a collaborative fashion to define the problem in observable terms. Curriculum-based measures and other informal measures (e.g., teacher-made probes and informal reading inventories) that indicate specified criterion levels of performance can serve as appropriate assessments for progress monitoring of student performance.

Since many educational professionals are likely to be aware of some of the traditional approaches to literacy instruction that have been used over many years, many of the approaches considered contemporary for meeting the needs of diverse learners. Of course, the interventions described are not exhaustive of all approaches for the amelioration of reading difficulties. For interventions, it should be realized that "one size does not fit all." It may be desirable to modify or target other interventions based on sufficient data obtained about the unique needs of individual learners.