Chapter 11: Help for Struggling Readers

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A student struggling with reading is a common occurrence in numerous classrooms. Many students are given text that they are unfamiliar with, while others might not possess necessary strategies to assist them in comprehension. In school, I found myself struggling with my reading at times because I did not possess good reading strategies, much like the students from Downers Grove South High School. Now as a teacher candidate, how can I help struggling readers based on my experience in school and from reading this chapter? William Glaser's idea of creating supportive relationships with your students so that they know that they will not be ridiculed when they struggle resonated with me. I believe that students would become more comfortable if I was able to connect with them based on my own struggles in middle school. I have observed students become discouraged by certain tasks in school, such as reading, where they might want to give up completely. As a teacher, I believe that promoting positive, supportive relationships between myself and students could increase morale and more efficient reading.



Lisa MacArtney, a biology teacher at Downers Grove South, uses an approach of creating a "human graph" where students are able to see their peers' strengths. I believe that this would be a positive way to encourage students to work on reading together. Also, the idea of promoting self-monitoring is another strategy that I believe is crucial. Students can benefit from support from their teacher, but they could also benefit greatly from understanding when they need to ask themselves questions or highlight confusions in a text. Overall, I believe that creating supportive relationships with your students and promoting self-monitoring could have a positive impact on a student while they develop their own reading strategies.

292 words

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 5, 2018 at 7:21 PM

    I completely agree with what you said about how creating supportive relationships in the classroom is essential. This was what I talked about in my blog because it also resonated with me, highly due to personal experience growing up. The human graph is very interesting to me because I feel that it's a great way to show students how everyone is different. Different students have different strengths, and this can be beneficial in the classroom, especially with group work. It is important for us as teachers to know the strengths of our students to figure out how best to support and encourage those students individually. (105)

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