Over the past few weeks I have researched my inquiry question on “Early intervention strategies to allow all students to have the ability to be successful in order to develop a love of reading.” Throughout my inquiry I will be using the book “Catching Readers Before They Fall” by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier to guide my research along with multiple other resources.
In order to dive deeper into this topic it is important that we have an understanding of Why aren’t all students successful readers?
According to “Catching Readers Before They Fall” part of the problem is twofold.
- Struggling readers are not applying a reading process system in their minds to make meaning of what they are learning in other words they have not learned how to fix errors or even recognize when they have made one.
- Many teachers have not had the opportunity to understand how reading works, which is how a students creates a reading process system in their own minds.
This topic is controversial because oftentimes teachers believe that if MOST of their students are learning to read then they must have developed a successful reading program. Although through my research it is hard to be satisfied with most of our student’s when 20% are struggling. These students need us as educators to understand how to help them build an effective reading process system. We have the opportunity to do this by educating ourselves about the reading process and how to support children as they construct a network of strategies. Often times the problem is these students don’t realize that they have the ability to use different strategies to solve their own errors.
What is a reading process system? you may ask..
When we are reading we are constantly using strategies to make meaning of the text we may visualize what is happening at the same time as inferring about what the character is thinking or feeling. Several processes work together in cohesion to guide us as readers through a story or text. Below is a picture from “Catching Readers Before They Fall” that shows one way to describe the array of strategies that are essential for reading.
For my next blog post I will be focusing on early intervention for struggling readers and how to apply it in your classroom.