Supporting struggling readers in the classroom is a challenge for many teachers. When you have an overstuffed classroom, trying to focus on students who are struggling can be hard. However, a personalized classroom makes focusing on supporting struggling readers easy.
Personalized Activities to Support Struggling Readers
Start Students in groups and assign an anchor text. Students can accomplish the reading in a multitude of ways depending on their level. They can read it individually, do round table reading, or paired reading. After the story has been read, students are then allowed to complete an assignment of their choice, each of which demonstrates mastery of a specified skill or standard.
Possible Options
Essay Writing. Students can write about a given topic utilizing the text they read.
Comic strip. Make sure the task is not simply summarization but to think critically and analyze the text.
Skits to perform live or in a video. Again, you want to make sure they are diving into the text and not just summarizing the story.
Podcast.
Working in groups is an old technique for supporting struggling readers, but the trick is to ensure that your students are all working together to complete the assignment and show mastery of the skill.
Getting Students who hate to read engaged in a text.
Supporting struggling readers is difficult when they hate to read. However, there are many things you can do in the classroom to get students more engaged. Here are some suggestions.
Group reading/ round table reading
breaking longer text into "skits" or "videos"
Reading along with an audiobook
Paired reading
Incorporate journaling, or discussion before, during, and after, the reading
Use graphic novels
allow art or comic book activities during the reading
Not all of these options will appeal to every reader, nor will all options work for each teacher, but trying new things and giving your struggling readers the support they need in the classroom will be worth it when they find that spark and become engaged!