Enhance Student Reading Skills
Improving Reading Across All Grade Levels
Improving students' reading ability is on the mind of every teacher, especially those who have students who are struggling to read on grade level. Using some creativity in introducing letters to young students, engaging older students and utilizing writing across all grade levels will help those teachers enhance their student's reading skills.
Use Texture to Introduce Reading
Using sandpaper or sand trays when teaching young children letters and sounds will enhance early reading skills through the involvement of the sense of touch. Children who learn best by touch will benefit greatly from this strategy, as well as any child who is in need of any type of sensory integration learning. Students with learning disabilities in reading and students with autism learn very well from this approach to learning reading as utilized in the Orton-Gillingham Phonemic Awareness program.
Creative Reading with Older Students
One difficulty in helping older students who struggle in reading is the lack of age appropriate text on an easier reading level. Coming up with creative solutions to this issue can make all the difference in helping motivate those students to learn to read. Lessons involving reading the newspaper can be a great tool towards helping these students, as the newspaper is often written on a lower grade level. Another wonderful way to help struggling older students is to utilize their text books from other subjects. This way the reading is relevant to their daily need to read for other classes.
Writing to Improve Reading
Teaching children to read often involves the use of writing. Reading Recovery programs utilize writing in each session. The idea is that some students' learning styles enables them to learn to read through the act of writing the letters. Encouraging a daily journal, even if it is only a couple of words at first, will help enhance a child's reading skills. This skill can be used to improve reading skills across all grade levels, starting as young as kindergarten.
When having students write in the classroom, emphasize skills that will help in reading. For example, discuss how to use adjectives to describe what they are writing by thinking about their five senses. This will help them understand context when reading. Have students illustrate their writing as well, and discuss how the pictures help provide additional clues to what they are writing.
Teaching a student to read can be difficult when a student continues to struggle despite all efforts. Coming up with some creative methods of teaching reading will help all students, including those with a reading disability. Using creative methods will help students of all ages and abilities.
Learn more tips for teaching reading.
Enhance Student Reading Skills
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