Reading Reflection 6: Help for Struggling Readers

The main focus of this chapter is how teachers can help students become better readers since students often are unable to visualize the words they read. This might be a result of the fact that many students lack enough background knowledge to make mental pictures of what they are reading, or they do not know how to determine what is important and what is not important when reading a passage. One suggested strategy is to have students act out a scene or draw a picture of a scene before reading the assigned material. I find this interesting because this type of activity usually is implemented after students have finish reading; however, it makes since to try to get your students involved in thinking about the reading before actually reading since good readers are continuously thinking while reading. Another reoccurring problem in my classroom is students do not want to think for themselves. Therefore, teachers need to encourage student seek answers to their questions instead of waiting for the teacher to simply give them a correct answer. By promoting students to take responsibility of monitoring their own learning, they will learn their strengths and weaknesses. This will ultimately allow the student to clear up any confusion he or she might be experiencing with the material (this is true for all content areas). In math, there is a huge focus on students being able to analyze a contextual problem and make sense of all the information presented in the problem. Therefore, it is very important for students to be able to determine what is information is important. Also, most real world scenarios can be modeled through mathematics. Thus, being able to visualize a contextual problem is an essential skill to be able to solve these types of problems. Hence, it is very important for students to develop these reading skills in order to be successful in their math classes.