STORIES STRATEGY TO IMPROVE STUDENT READING

Stories Strategy To Improve Student Reading



Stories Strategy To Improve Student Reading

Introduction

Reading is a complex and dynamic process (Pearson & Stephens, 1994). Often a great deal of emphasis is placed on providing support for very young readers. Because older students, those in grades 4 and above generally do not get this same level of support their reading difficulties may go unchecked. Students in upper elementary grades who experience reading problems tend to be labeled instead of taught.

The child is viewed as somehow deficient, which places the blame for the child's academic difficulty on the child. This deficiency model is at the root of the at-risk label. Labeling a child at-risk implies that the child and his/her family are somehow deficient and that failure is almost inevitable.

The implication of the deficiency model is that the child needs remediation to make up for what is missing in order to fix him/her. It is true that some students have challenges, such as poverty, single parent families, difficulty in school, etc., which others do not have. In articles, papers, and government documents, these children are labeled as at-risk. Changes in the education, and lives, of these children begin with a “conceptual re-orientation of assumptions…from student risk to student potential”; from children at-risk to children facing challenges. A more positive view of the child will lead to more positive ways to support children. According to Swadener, it is time to move beyond the deficiency model. Instead of ascribing deficiencies to the child and family, educators need to begin to find solutions to assist these students. Education professionals need to stop viewing certain students as at-risk and instead take a more positive approach (Wang & Reynolds, 1995). By changing the way we view the child and his/her life circumstances, teacher and child are empowered to use those challenges as strengths. Thus, instead of using the term at-risk to describe these children, I will use children facing challenges.

True change will not just come from rearranging the way we think about these children; new labels are not the answer. We, as education professionals, must also know what instructional methods work to transform challenges to strengths. Children in grades four and above deserve the same level of research-based support that younger children already receive.

The focus of this paper is on students in grades 4-6 who are continuing to have reading problems and face additional challenges in their lives. Many times, their lack of success in school has led them to have feelings of academic insecurity and inferiority. It is not that these children cannot succeed in school; it is that they do not have the tools or the belief that they can. Through explanation and modeling, the teacher can give them the tools, but that is not enough. The teacher must strongly believe that the students can successfully implement these tools, train them how to use them, and allow them to be responsible for dong ...