I have been reading a very interesting book called The Fluent Reader by Timothy V. Rasinski. He has an interesting chapter on how to help students learn to read who are developing readers or struggling readers. I knew all of the methods that he mentioned, but he backed up his methods with research and more effective strategies then I have seen in the past.
He discusses Paired Reading. Paired reading is essentially where a more proficient reader, either a parent/teacher and child, older student and child, or two children read together. Paired reading should be about 10-20 minutes at a time at least five times a week. It is recommend that the less proficient student should be able to read 90-95 percent of the material accurately for this instruction to be the most effective. The student and teaching reader read to together side by side. The student follows along with his/her finger. It is recommended that if the text is harder the teacher should read a little louder and match your reading rate to push the student. If the text is easier then the teacher should use a quieter voice and provide less support. When the passage is finished the teacher and the student should chat about the reading. The student should be allowed to read independently if they would like during this process. This is really nothing new to home educators. But what excited me was where he talked about a research study where the majority of students who participated in paired reading at least five times a week made 6 months of reading progress in six to ten weeks. (Limbrick, McNaugthon, & Cameron, 1985). I have a video below that demonstrates this.
The other interesting study was that which revealed the positive gains that students made when listening to audio books while following along in the text. Students who did not follow along in the text did not make the kind of gains as those who did. Here is an article that discusses the gains students made and some resources for audio books. Here is another article that discusses the benefits for all readers. With many kids at many different reading levels my students often listen to audio books. We mostly use the public library for their audio books and downloadable digital books. I renewed my commitment to having them follow along in the book after reading these articles.
The last intriguing idea was that students who watched closed captioned programming made gains in reading. At my house we turn on the closed captioning because there are so many loud people in our house making it challenging to hear a movie or show. My students were pretty excited about this!
I am hopeful this helps you with some specific ways to help your struggling or developing readers.
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