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It started with a required reading assignment in a college course. It’s not like I hadn’t read inspiring articles with helpful teaching strategies before. But this time was different. It was as if the author was speaking directly to me and I KNEW. This was something I had to try.
I was in my second year teaching reading to a group of young boys in grades 4-6 for an extra thirty minutes each day of our four-day school week. Their Lexile levels ranged from 275 to 650. Their needs were varied and our time constraints made the task seem daunting. Two of the boys’ reading progress had pretty much stalled the year before. One was making moderate progress with fluency, but was reading more than two years below his grade level. His comprehension was nearly nonexistent. The two oldest boys were beginning to give in to the frustration that comes with not being able to read at a sufficient level to succeed in school. Of those two, one was receiving special education services and had been diagnosed with dyslexia. All of them had plenty of practice covering up their reading deficiencies through a mix of untimely and disruptive humor, laid back resignation, or silent rebellion. Each one was desperately close to losing the spark for reading just because it was so HARD.
What was I going to do? How could I help restore that spark...and possibly fan it into a flame? It was questions like those that replayed in my mind daily until I came across a strategy that has literally transformed the way I approach my limited time with these boys. Following are the words from Regie Routman’s (2003) book, Reading Essentials: The Specifics you Need to Teach Reading Well, that changed the dynamics of my classroom and renewed my hope that their time in my room could make a
positive impact on their academic journey.
Relevant texts that students write without guidance are especially powerful for readers who struggle. Reading their own written text on a topic they are passionate about can be a springboard to becoming a reader. They willingly reread these texts and are almost always successful. I often write such texts in guided reading groups at the lowest levels because it can be difficult to find meaningful texts for these students. The most severely disabled reader I ever worked with learned to read as a fourth grader after we collaborated on texts about space, which he beautifully illustrated and proudly read to anyone who would listen. All our word work came from those texts. Shared writing texts are a great way to differentiate instruction. (p. 54)
This was exactly what I was looking for. I read those words over the weekend and began applying the strategy the very next class session. With much excitement, the boys collaborated to write a story. I allowed them to choose the theme and helped them create an outline. The ideas came pouring out so quickly it was hard to keep up with them! I wrote as they shared their thoughts aloud. Over the next several days we continued to work on the story and they entered and left my classroom chattering and laughing. They were going back to their regular classrooms telling their classmates and teachers about their story and asking me when they could share it with them. This was more than a spark…it was a full on flame!
Motivating Struggling Readers through Collaborative Writing
Jerri James