Learning styles and strategies for helping struggling readers

Aira C. Vitug

“Give a man a fish and he casts for a day; help hi learn how to fish, and he eats for life. This is commonly known aphorism that underscores the centrality of learning and education in development”.

Learning is most effective and efficient when learners are engaged in learning by doing. Hence, assessment of learning outcomes is closely aligned with the learning context and learning activities. Learning is an active process , not simply responding to environment. Thus , students seek to make sense of their surroundings by integrating new knowledge, cultivated, manipulated, arrange and organized in meaningful learning.

Students who do not read with fluency sound choppy and awkward have reading problems. Those students may consider struggling readers. They need more practice with speed and smoothness in reading. Children who find reading laborious tend not to read. But, fluency becomes increasingly important.

Learner whose reading is slow and laboured will have trouble meeting the reading demands of their grade level because of the volume of reading required escalates dramatically. In order to make meaning from printed material a learner needs to draw upon many skills to be developed at the same time.

Marily Adams (1990 ) compares the operation of reading system to the operation of the reading system to the operation of a car. In this case, readers develop mechanical system for identifying words, fuel it with print, fix up problems along the way and make sure it runs smoothly and most importantly reading requires motivation, strategies and mindful of routine.

Different styles and strategies will help struggling readers overcome common learning difficulties. They will help teachers to develop meaningful plans for hard– to–reach students underachievers and students whose academic performance falls below.

The learning styles and strategies fall into the following categories: extending vocabulary to depict the word meaning, using bubble diagram to extend the word meanings facilitates better understanding, using games such as prediction which helps to build predicting about events and ideas that might happen as well as help the students to build confidence and improving summarizing skills to introduce prompt sheets and short stories.

Indeed, applying the strategies will help the students make connections , apply what they are learning, practice new skills and monitor their own learning. The styles and strategies will be useful to both teachers and students that will result to a productive teaching and learning.

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The author is EST I at Santiago Elementary School, Lubao