WHY STRUGGLING READERS CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE

ANALYN S. CONCEPCION

Most Struggling readers never catch up with their higher achieving classmates because schools create school days for them where they are practically forced to struggle all day long. In other words, in most schools, struggling readers are lucky if they spend 10 to 20 percent of their school day in lessons designed to meet their needs. Typically those lessons are part of the of the intervention effort the school has created. But unfortunately, most of their day, is spent in classroom where the instruction is targeted to the average achieving student. In other words, struggling readers struggle more because they get far less appropriate instruction everyday than the achieving students do.

Think of it this way-that second grade pupil still reading at the first grade level often spend his day in a second-grade classroom where almost every lesson is focused on second-grade-level pupils. Too often, even the reading lesson is drawn from a second-grade core reading program, a text too hard for that struggling reader. Rarely, if ever will second grade students who are struggling readers benefit much from second- grade reading lessons. The lessons are simply over the children’s heads, and rarely do the instructional guides provided by the publishers of second-grade reading programs, contain useful advice on how to modify, adapt or replace reading lesson materials so that the struggling readers will benefit.(McGill-Franzen, Zmach, Solic&Zeig, 2006) .

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The author is Teacher I at San Isidro Elementary School, San Simon District