Meangingful Prompts for Struggling Readers

When I was in fourth grade, my class had to memorize our math facts to automaticity and quote each family of facts to the teacher within a given time frame (60 seconds per fact family, if I remember correctly). Everyone who quoted all their fact families through 12s by Thanksgiving was rewarded with a Winnie the Pooh party after lunch one day. All the A.A. Milne characters were going to be at the party and the class was going to eat popcorn and a Winnie the Pooh-decorated cake and watch a Pooh movie. This was a really big deal when I was in 4th grade! Now, math has never been my strong suit – I’m a linguistic learner. Sadly, I was the only student in all of fourth grade who couldn’t quote all the fact families in the 60-second-per-family-time-frame . . . and so I sat in the hall with a student teacher, practicing my facts, while my peers enjoyed their hot popcorn and cool Pooh party. At the time, I was devastated. Not because I missed out on the movie and cake, but because I truly couldn’t remember that tricky 8x7 and I felt like a failure. My teacher was disappointed in me and my parents were none too happy, either, judging this failure to memorize my math facts as laziness or a lack of character. How glad I am that teaching methods have evolved since I was a fourth grader (many, many moons ago!) and today we look for ways to help students truly understand math concepts rather than just memorize them by rote. Unfortunately, that change in thinking about how we teach math doesn’t always transfer to how we teach reading.

In many (dare I say most?) classes, when readers are unsure of a word, they pause. Then one of three things usually happens: Either another student calls out the word and the reader repeats it and goes on, the teacher calls out the word and the reader repeats it, or the teacher says, “Sound it out” . . . but our students are so afraid of failure that most of the time they will remain silent until someone calls the word out (or they don’t understand what “sound it out” means . . . or sounding it out doesn’t make sense because challenging words are often not phonics-based words). This is a huge disservice to readers because they don’t learn the skills necessary to figure out words they don’t know. So, I’m here to say: when readers struggle, don’t give them the word – and teach your students not to call the word out, either!

The first few times this happens in my class, students do blurt the word out because this is what they are conditioned to do anytime there’s an awkward pause in reading. I stop everything and we have a teachable moment: thank you for wanting to be a good friend, but giving classmates the word robs them of an opportunity to learn how to figure it out. We all get stuck sometimes in our reading – and we all deserve the chance to learn how to figure out the words we’re stuck on. So, let’s not rob one another of those learning opportunities. After the third or fourth such discussion, it’s rare for students to blurt words out when classmates are stuck. Here’s the kicker . . . I don’t give students the word, either! Instead, I prompt them with thinking-cues, such as:

Struggling readers often freeze and wait for someone to blurt out challenging words, but allowing students to form such habits (either waiting or blurting!) doesn’t give them the necessary tools to repair their own reading and improve their own skills. It’s much more effective to create an atmosphere in which all students know that it’s okay not to know challenging words . . . but it’s not okay not to try to figure them out before getting help!

Students who don’t develop effective reading strategies slide along a downward spiral – they do less and less reading until they stop trying altogether. Students need to hear, “It’s okay to struggle with challenging words. Some words stump me, too! Let’s figure out how to figure tricky words out!”

On a separate (but somewhat related) note, let’s make it okay to struggle . . . even okay to fail in our struggles . . . because we learn perseverance in the struggle. We also learn how to do things differently and better. What? Sounding the word out didn’t work? That’s okay – that means we try a different strategy!

Here are a few great quotes to hang in the classroom to remind us – and our students – that it’s okay to struggle and fail and learn from what didn’t work and keep trying a new strategy until something does work! The key for students is to keep trying . . . and the key for teachers is to keep giving students a toolbox of strategies to keep trying!

Happy Teaching!

Four Simple Ways to Help Struggling Readers and English Language Learners

Looking for some simple yet effective ways to help struggling readers and English Language Learners in your classroom? Aside from working on skill-building and reading strategies, there are a few quick and easy modifications you can make to your resources to help your struggling readers:

1 – Use a sans serif font, such as Arial, Century Gothic, Trebuchet, or Verdana. Serifs – or the small projecting features at the ends of letters in fonts such as Times New Roman – can slow reading down considerably, causing students to lose the meaning of the text.

2 – Be sure you have only one space at the end of sentences, rather than the old-school method of two spaces. Two spaces at the ends of sentences looks like a running pool of blank space to struggling readers. It draws their eyes away from the actual words, making reading a tedious process.

3 – Do not justify reading passages. To the detriment of my inner artsy, creative child: I love order, organization, and symmetry – which means I LOVE to justify my texts so that both the left and the right columns are evenly spaced . . . as you can tell from all my blog posts. To me, this makes the text look polished and professional, as in a novel. However, fully justified text causes struggling readers to see rivers of space, making the words disjointed and causing learners to read in clipped, fragmented phrases, breaking down comprehension. For many struggling readers, it’s better to left-justify text and let the right column look ragged.


4 – When possible, copy worksheets on blue or green paper. White paper creates a glare for struggling readers, making it difficult to concentrate on the words and causing them to fatigue quicker. If it’s not possible to copy on blue paper, consider purchasing blue overlays for students to place over their worksheets.

While the following pages may look similar to non-struggling readers, there is a world of difference in them for struggling readers. I modified page 2 in less than three minutes; for struggling learners, it is much more conducive to fluent reading, leading to increased comprehension: 

Taking a bit of time to implement these quick and simple tips can make a huge difference for some students, creating a more inclusive and thoughtful learning environment that sets more students up for success!

Have a tip to add? Please share it below!