Students who struggle in reading often experience frustration, discouragement, and a loss of self-esteem. This can impact their behavior in school and socially.
A recent study from ETS and the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund found that kids below a certain decoding threshold show slower growth in other reading subskills, like vocabulary and comprehension.
Phonics
Phonics is a core component of reading intervention for students who are struggling with decoding and/or spelling. This is because phonics is what helps readers “crack the code” of written words so they can read them automatically and fluently.
When students struggle with phonics, it is important to teach them at the level they are at, not where they should be at. Using a tier 1 universal literacy screening (such as Fast Bridge or DIBELS) to identify students who are at-risk of reading difficulty can help teachers determine the appropriate level for their students.
In addition, teachers should use a phonics program that aligns to the Science of Reading research to provide explicit and structured instruction. This will help to ensure that students are receiving the best possible instruction in a short amount of time. Students should also be re-screened regularly to track progress and make sure that they are being taught the most effective strategies.
Comprehension
Comprehension is the ability to interpret and understand what is read. This involves making connections to prior knowledge, thinking deeply about text and asking questions. Reading comprehension skills are necessary for students to gain a deeper understanding of content and themes.
Strategies for comprehending text include prediction, questioning, identifying main ideas, and summarizing. Students also need to know the structure of different genres. For example, fiction stories have a plot, characters, setting and conflict while nonfiction texts have a topic and supporting details.
Students who have difficulty interpreting and understanding what they read may need a combination of foundational skills and comprehension intervention. This is especially true for students who have poor comprehension despite strong decoding and reading fluency. Research supports the effectiveness of comprehension strategy instruction for these students. Vocabulary and language skills are also important for comprehension. These include the ability to identify a word’s meaning, enunciate and pronounce words correctly, and understand syntax and grammatical rules.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a key component of reading comprehension. Children who know more words are able to understand what they read better and faster than those who do not. The size of a child’s vocabulary is also an indicator of their future academic success (Dr Deslea Konza).
Teaching children to learn word meanings from context can improve their understanding of what they read. This can be done through the use of clues that appear before, after, or near an unfamiliar word. Using this strategy can help students make predictions about what they will read, understand the meaning of unfamiliar words without a dictionary, and answer questions about what they have just read.
Incorporate vocabulary instruction within subject-specific lessons and activities. Focus on Tier 2 words that are familiar but not completely understood and are likely to be encountered in reading across subjects. Teach students to recognize morphological features of words such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots.
Fluency
Children who have fluency can read faster and more accurately than those who do not. This allows them to gain more meaning from the text they read, which in turn helps them learn more. They are able to visualize scenes, anticipate what will happen next, laugh at jokes and make inferences.
For students to develop their reading fluency, they need to practice frequently with meaningful texts. It is also important to include strategies that encourage their self-reflection.
Reading intervention should incorporate strategies that focus on all of the pillars of reading, including fluency. To help improve fluency, teachers can use a number of methods, such as Readers’ Theater and Paired Repeated Reading. Both are effective and engaging ways to have students practice their fluency. During these activities, students read passages that are at their level of fluency for 1 minute and the teacher tally the words they read. The result is their Words Per Minute (WCPM). This is an easy and efficient way to assess the effectiveness of reading intervention.