It sounds like the material your students are reading is too difficult.
What grade are they in? How you address decoding and fluency errors can change depending on the age of the students. There are many ways to help struggling readers--here is one way that I have found to be effective when students can't read a word correctly: If the student truly does not know how to attack a challenging word, then your best bet is to model a strategy. I am a fan of more explicit approaches to decoding to prevent confusion and avoid chronic error problems. With that said, I intervene after a 3 second pause or so. This helps prevent frustration and tells the students that I am there to support them. Considering the word-if appropriate, I model/ prompt sounding out the word or if the word is irregular then I bring their attention to sound chunks or affixes they may already know. We say those chunks together then I model how to put the word together. Until skills are better developed, I model first, then have the student repeat what I said. Usually they are following along with their finger. All the kids in my group participate so that everyone is engaged and we work as a team to figure out the words. The environment is supportive. For older students, I have found that immediately telling them the misread word and then having them spell the word helps them to improve faster and get to the meaning quicker. It also keeps frustration levels lower too. I always have them start the sentence over so that they can process the meaning of the sentence in addition to reading the words correctly. I can't say enough about picking the right book, modeling, correcting immediately and starting the sentence over. I have also found it helpful to tell the students that we will read a page, or paragraph or chapter more then once. The first time we read it, we read only for accuracy and some fluency practice. The 2nd, 3rd or 4th time (depending on need and interest)--we delve into meaning and all the rich comprehension strategies that so many on this site are so very good at. What comprehension strategy you focus on depends on the needs of your kids and book you are reading. But remember that it's a lot harder to address comprehension if the students cannot read the book with 97% accuracy. That's roughly 3 errors per 100 words. Sources for me include Shaywitz, Moats, Johns, Engelmann and others. Hope this helps. Amy McGovern Reading Teacher > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:56:35 -0400 > Subject: [MOSAIC] trouble reading for comprehension > > Many students in my pre-students teaching class have trouble reading. They > have trouble connecting sound to letter recognition to identifying words. By > the time they try to connect the words together to make sentences. They go so > slow that it interferes with their comprehension. The students become lost > about what they just read. I am not sure if because they go slow they forgot > what they read or if they had problems reading because they read just for the > words and not for meaning. > > What is a good way to help my students read more fluent and finish reading > with comprehension to what they read? What strategies should be used? > > Thank you for your help. > > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. > _________________________________________________________________ Rediscover Hotmail®: Get e-mail storage that grows with you. http://windowslive.com/RediscoverHotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Rediscover_Storage1_042009 _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
