A new national survey of teachers in grades 3-8 from the RAND Corp. finds 44 percent of their students always or nearly always face challenges reading the content in their classes, according to Education Week. Ninety-seven percent of teachers say they modify their instruction to help struggling readers at least once or twice a week.
A previous RAND survey found many secondary teachers still work with students on foundational reading skills like sounding out words and spelling.
Reading struggles can have a negative ripple effect for older kids. Here’s why:
In older grades, it’s not only English/language arts classes that require strong reading skills, but social studies, science, and even math. In the RAND survey, teachers of subjects other than English and language arts say their students spent about half of class time reading and writing.
But teachers of older students usually don’t address foundational reading difficulties. Remediating basic skills is time-consuming and difficult when teachers are working with students toward higher-level goals, like writing argumentative essays or analyzing poetry.
“For a student who has gotten to 4th, 5th, 6th grade and is still struggling with those foundational skills, it is making it harder for them to access that higher-order literacy skill development that we hope students are achieving,” says one expert.
Nearly half of upper elementary teachers, and almost 1 in 5 middle school teachers, report that they are trying to fill foundational gaps by teaching word-reading skills like phonics and spelling three or more times a week.
Most states have passed legislation requiring schools to use evidence-based methods to support younger struggling readers. But few have extended these mandates to middle grades.
To help older students with reading difficulties, teachers say they need more resources.
More one-on-one help for students was particularly popular: 48 percent of middle school teachers said they had a moderate or major need for reading specialists, while 45 percent identified a moderate or major need for tutors.
Teachers also wanted more training:
Two in 5 teachers surveyed hold at least one misconception about how children learn to read, such as agreeing with the statement that “most students will learn to read on their own if given the proper books and time to read them.”
Research shows that interventions targeting multiple skills at once—such as fluency and comprehension—can have higher positive effects for older students than single-skill practice.
The Project for Adolescent Literacy has fielded a survey to identify practices middle and high school teachers employ to support struggling readers and plans to build a bank of resources that these teachers can use.
Teachers must also attend to the social-emotional issues that often accompany reading difficulties in teenagers.
Students who have gone from grade to grade without seeing much progress tend to develop “avoidance strategies” for reading, says the expert quoted earlier.
“They’ve seen it all before, and they feel like it won’t help them,” she says. “I think students are rightfully a bit skeptical when they’re in high school, and they’re still struggling with some of those foundational skills.”
Education Week
