Re: New Reading Teacher Needs Help!

On 1/05/09, MPS wrote:
> ...they are
> expecting me to create a curriculum as I go.
>
> The school year is halfway through, and I feel like I am
> struggling. Any ideas or anyone willing to help?

Hi,

Odds are that a large percentage of them don't understand
phonics and have difficulty reading three and four syllable
words in their content courses. They probably do a lot of
guessing when they encounter words they don't recognize.

I work with struggling readers in a private reading practice
and have found that many of them have been trying to learn to
read while experiencing vision problems that require vision
therapy to remedy. However, by 7th or 8th grade, those vision
problems often have resolved one way or another and reading
becomes easier to learn. By that time, however, many have
adopted guessing as their main reading strategy.

So, I've taken the curriculum I use and written an adaptation
of it to be used in the classroom with older kids. The
processes are sound and have been tested one-on-one with a
couple hundred kids in my practice, but to my knowledge no
one has actually tried the curriculum in a full classroom.
Nevertheless, reading it should give you some ideas. I've
mentioned it a couple of times in here in the past so maybe
someone reading this has actually tried it and can comment on
how it went?

In addition if you feel you need more information on how to
effectively teach phonics, look at the part of my website
titled "A Suggestion for Teachers" (third item down from the
top on the sidebar.)

Rod Everson

OnTrack Reading-Junior High Phonics Course

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