Web Watch:
Two Sites for Teachers Working with Struggling or Reluctant Readers
Dana Cammack
Teaching reading in a networked classroom poses a particular kind of dilemma with an enormous amount of possibility. The computers in your room can open up a world of resources for you as a teacher, or they can limit what you are able to do. As a seventh grade teacher in a computer classroom, I sometimes wondered how to do my job using technology. What I found was that I could use the technology to help me do my job.
One of the greatest aspects of the Internet for reading professionals is that it links educators and ideas. Thousands of Web sites have been written to share lessons, units, strategies, and more. Two sites, Teaching Reading in Every Classroom and the Read In! Foundation, provide teachers with resources and links they can use to enhance their teaching. The first is part of an inservice program developed in connection with California's language arts standards; the second includes teacher resources and links both educators and students can use.
When I taught seventh grade I found I had few tools to help the reluctant and struggling readers in my class. While some qualified for additional instruction through the resource room, quite a few children needed some extra help but didn’t qualify for special services. The program available through Teaching Reading in Every Classroom is designed to help teachers with just these students, in grades 4–8. The Web site gives a brief overview of the program for teaching reading to reluctant readers; the full version is available for purchase on CD-Rom through the site. While this sounds a bit like a quick fix, the 16 areas covered in this program are particularly appropriate for helping struggling readers. The series begins with a story about a struggling student who learned to read and moves through managing a reading classroom, teaching reflective reading and reader response, specific reading strategies (including decoding, practicing high frequency words, using context to aid comprehension), and building student interest.
As a teacher I tried to help students before determining clearly their specific problem areas, so I was particularly pleased to see the topic of assessment addressed. I was also happy to see the section on teaching decoding. Although it is often assumed that students have mastered decoding by late elementary school, many of the problems my middle schoolers had with comprehension and even spelling were improved after explicit decoding instruction.
This professional development series is available for purchase through the Web site, which also offers online support. The Web site is supported by the San Diego County Office of Education and reflects California's state standards in reading and language arts. This doesn't preclude the program’s use elsewhere, however, since all of the areas covered are useful to any teacher working with struggling readers.
Of course, both struggling and competent readers can be reluctant to read. In my classroom, I found that some students read only certain authors or genres while others refused to read at all because they didn't know any good books or writers. The Web site of the Read In! Foundation is a goldmine for teachers who have such students in class.
The Read In! Foundation began in 1994 to support a reading event involving two third-grade classrooms. Now, 6 years later, the annual Read In! event reaches more than 328,000 teachers and students in 13 countries. Participants also include such children's authors as Virginia Hamilton and R.L. Stine. This Web site provides information for teachers who would like to get involved, but it also has much more. In the educators’ section is a link to lesson plans categorized by grade level. The middle school link I followed included lesson plans for a PowerPoint book report, for writing and illustrating books, and for other ideas, most of which incorporated technology.
There are also links to monthly postings from resource teachers, to information on literacy pedagogy, and a listserv. But perhaps most appealing for students are the links to biographies of authors and lists of their works. For a child hooked on Judy Blume, a click provides with information about the author, a link to her Web site, and a list of all the books she has written. For a teacher who can't think of another Blume book this child hasn't read, this might be the answer.
In the case of the student who has no idea what to read, surfing around the author links and following them to authors' Web sites may provide inspiration. For a student who loves jokes, for example, clicking on the Bruce Coville link gives a list of titles and a link to the author's home page, where information about My Teacher is an Alien and other Coville books is available (along with a glossary of "alien terms" that fans can click on to find out more).
Teaching Reading in Every Classroom and the Read In! Foundation provide resources for teachers whose classes include readers working slightly below grade level or struggling to find books that match their interests. Of course, these are only two of the many teacher resources out there. As the Web continues to mature, more and more educators are finding ways to share ideas, and I encourage you to find (and share with your colleagues) Web sites and resources that help all of us do a better job teaching our students.
About the Author
Cammack is a former seventh-grade teacher now working on a Ph.D in language and literacy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Reach her by e-mail at dana.w.cammack@vanderbilt.edu.
For an index of Electronic Classroom Web Watches, click here. To print this Web Watch, point and click your mouse anywhere on the article's text; then use your browser's print command.
Citation: Cammack, D. (2001, February). Two sites for teachers working with struggling or reluctant readers [an Electronic Classroom Web Watch]. Reading Online, 4(7). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/webwatch/twosites/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted February 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232