Struggling Student/Difficult Text

I've been thinking a lot about students who face difficult text everyday and the teachers who teach them. We know that students learn best when the text they confront falls in their instructional level (95 - 97% word accuracy, 75 - 89% comprehension). But let's face it, when students hit middle school and go on to high school, more often than not they are given materials that are too difficult for them. This is a very common problem! In most classes in middle and high school, teachers have lots of content to cover. In addition, these teachers don't feel they know a lot about reading. So, what's a teacher to do?

There are several things teachers can do to deal with this problem but in this posting I would like to begin to address a question I get asked a lot.

"What can I do to help my students read (and learn) from materials that are too difficult?"

First, teachers must plan ahead!

• You must know what text students will be expected to read for the week.
• Once you have chosen the amount of text for the week, split it into sections students can read each day.
  
• Sometimes it is helpful to split the daily sections into small bits so that you can guide students at the breaking points.
  
• You must identify vocabulary in the week's section of text that students need to know.
  
• Finally, it is good to know the structure of the text to be read i.e. cause/effect, problem/solution, sequential, concept/definition, etc.

Once you have chosen the text and vocabulary and have identified the text structure, it is important to think about three steps:

1. Before-reading activities
2. During-reading activities
3. After-reading activities

For now, I am only going to address the Before-reading Activities. Before-reading involves a couple of things:

• Frontloading vocabulary
• Activating prior knowledge
• Making Connections
• Setting a purpose for reading
• Giving readers a way to organize learning as they read

Vocabulary Frontloading
Teaching vocabulary and frontloading vocabulary are a bit different. In direct instruction of vocabulary you teach with the goal of students KNOWING these words - at least to a level of knowledge that they know the words in context. However, when a teacher frontloads vocabulary, s/he is giving the students a synonym or brief description of the word to avoid comprehension interruption when students are reading.

Activating Prior (Background) Knowledge and Making Connections
We know that learning occurs when we connect new learning to something we already know. We've all heard the analogy of the file cabinet in our brains with certain file folders containing knowledge of what we have already learned. The idea of activating prior knowledge plays on that same idea. Teachers want to give students an activity that forces the learner to file through his/her brain for any background knowledge s/he already has on the subject. One of the most common ways teachers do this is with the KWL (Ogle, 1982). (This strategy is actually a before-, during-, and after-reading activity.)

• Know - You ask students to brainstorm what they already know about a subject.
• Want to learn - You ask students to identify what they want to learn about the topic.
  
• Learned - You ask students to record what they have learned about the topic.

Setting the Purpose
Now that students have identified what they already know about a topic and therefore, connected it to their own lives, it is time to set a purpose for reading. (In the KWL, the "want to learn" can be the purpose.) Setting the purpose sounds something like this: "The subheading says 'Causes of the Civil War'. Read the next section of text and find the causes of the Civil War." When setting the purpose the teacher should ask a question or give a task that requires students to locate information in the text they are about to read.

Organizing New Learning
Although the organization of new learning is the during-reading activity, students must get instruction on this activity. This instruction should include teacher modeling of the activity and some guided practice of the activity. For example: The students are to read to find the causes of the Civil War. As they read, the teacher might want the students to organize the information in a bubble map or a graphic organizer. If that be the case, the teacher might begin the lesson, demonstrating finding causes of the Revolutionary War using the same bubble map the students will be using. After finding two causes from the text the teacher is reading, the teacher might have students work in pairs to find the third cause.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I have shared. I will be happy to go into further detail if someone wants more information.