One of the questions I’ve had this week is why do some students struggle to become fluent readers? Tompkins provides a detailed list of characteristics that are usually exhibited by dysfluent readers such as “students who guess at words based on beginning sounds, students who don’t remember a word the second or third time it is used in a passage and students who point at words as they read” (page 208). The list goes beyond these three examples and it seems exhaustive, however, Tomkins goes on to conclude “there’s no single common problem, some have difficulty decoding words, whereas others read very slowly or in a monotone, ignoring phrasing and punctuation cues” (page 209).
I still wonder why some kids are fluent readers sooner than others. Another researcher named Allington provides three reasons why: 1) students regularly read books that are too difficult, 2) students actually read very little and 3) “teachers frequently ask struggling readers to read aloud and then immediately interrupt them when they misread a word rather than giving them time to notice and correct their error” (Tompkins, page 209). I can relate to all three of these reasons. Sometimes students will pick up and “read” a more difficult book to make it appear they are further ahead than they really are due to peer pressure and internal feelings of inadequacy. Other struggling readers “pretend” to read, but are just going through the motions because they haven’t had enough exposure to reading aloud due to socioeconomic conditions such as the inability to acquire proper reading materials. In addition, ESL students are generally not exposed to various types of literature and are not read to on a daily basis because their parents do not speak English at home.
Allington’s third reason “teacher interruption” was a surprise to me but the more I thought about it, I realized I have corrected students who have misread a word during read alouds during my substitute teaching experiences. I did not think of what I was doing as an interruption, but I guess it could be construed that way. Going forward I will try to provide positive feedback before and after read alouds and quickly try to grasp each student’s instructional reading needs whether they are fluent readers, to struggling readers, ESL readers, etc. I can do this by making inferences from teacher notes, delineation of groups for certain exercises, interactions with students during centers and small group discussions.
Sources:
Allington, R. L. (2009). What really matters in fluency: Research-based best practices across the curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson.
Tompkins, Gail E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Figuring out ways to help struggling readers is a very difficult task, but a monumentally important one because reading is so important to success for our future students lives. And for that reason, I agree with you that it's really important for us to know what types of situations interfere with learning to read, so that we can tackle those situations as they arise.
ReplyDeleteAs far as teacher intervention during read aloud periods goes, I actually still remember how much it bothered me when my teacher corrected me after I'd stumbled over a word. I am positive that my teacher intervened only to help me, but it was a harsh hit to believe that my teacher didn't think that I could work out the word on my own and, especially when it happened in a read aloud setting, I often found it embarrassing because it felt like an awful failure to me, even if it wasn't. So, in short, I agree with you that we need to be careful how we approach students while they are learning to read, so that our help actually proves useful to the students. I think that your suggestions about how to approach this point in the future are excellent.