In Chapter 10, Beers notes, "It's important to remember that students don't develope automaticity via decoding but rather through repeated exposure to a word they can decode" (p. 205). She continues on to mention that "our dependent readers who are struggling with word recognition may need to see this word as many as forty times" (p. 205). These quotes helped me to consider the importance of frequent exposure to words and reading that our dependent readers need. For our dependent readers, they may be able to sound out a word but may to see the word up to forty times before they can automatically recognize it while reading.
Beers also offers many strategies for helping students improve automaticity and fluency. One strategy that I particularly like is reading aloud to students. Our dependent readers need us to model good expression, phrasing and pacing. By reading aloud to our students on a regular basis, we are modeling for them what it means to be a good reader. Also, I think reading aloud to students offers us a variety of opportunities to directly teach phrasing, for instance. It also allows us to work on comprehension skills which dependent readers often struggle with.
Finally, I like the fact that Beers mentions, "We cannot confuse teaching about reading with the act of reading" (p. 218). It's important to provide our struggling readers with ample opportunities to read texts at their instructional or independent level because repeated practice is what they need in order to become better readers.
You commented on the fact that students need to be frequently exposed to words in order to really remember them. This is exactly where I am with my unit plan I just finished for the Principles of Teaching class. I thought that spending a whole class period reviewing 5 poetic devices that the class had been working on all week was a bit much. But, I had to stop to reflect on the fact that some of these students may really have not been exposed to poetry at all. The only way they'll really understand is by being exposed to it frequently and by employing it frequently.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty surprised to learn that a struggling reader may need to be exposed to challenging words forty times...I will definitely remember that when working with students.
ReplyDeleteI saw first hand how effective reading aloud is. The student I worked with for SPED responded really well to this strategy. We did echo reading, where I would sentence, then she would read the sentence. It was very effective! Plus, I think that sometimes students are uncomfortable actually hearing themselves read...we had a protected environment to practice in.
I agree that reading aloud to students or letting them follow along with tapes can be helpful, but I worry that my students would A) fall asleep, B) not pay attention, or C) just listen to the tapes but not read along with them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm with you! I thought it was very interesting that non-fluent readers need to read the words four times more than fluent readers! I thought that it was just a natural thing to learn to read, but I guess that's only for some of us!