Helping Emergent Readers

I find there is one student in particular that is greatly struggling to operate at a first grade level. He is in the lowest reading group for guided reading with my CT and has still not moved past the first level of books provided by my CT. This student still struggles to put the correct sound with the letter, especially with digraphs such as ch, sh, wh, th. In addition, if he can sound out the individual sounds of a word, he then has trouble blending those sounds together. For example, he might say c / a / t with the correct sound attached to each letter but doesn't hear himself blending those sounds together to create the word cat. Therefore he usually guesses while reading and instead of saying cat after he sounded out the letters he will say something completely different such as Christmas. This student thus has difficulties with comprehension and this lack of ability carries over onto his writing. He needs quite a bit of time to complete writing assignments because he is not sure how to spell words and is either constantly asking, looking them up using a word chart, or finds something different to say in his writing. Many times, he wants to write something but is afraid it will not be correct so he writes something different which holds his writing back.

This is a student who needs some scaffolded instructional activities to help improve his level of reading and writing. Tompkins strategies for emergent readers are very helpful ones and I think my student could benefit from a few of them very much. I think it would be helpful for him to use big books in order to assist him in making connections with sounds and letters. I also think it would be helpful for him to attend literacy centers that were beneficial. For example, Tompkins suggests having literacy materials in play centers. I would have him visit specific centers each time they occur that included a focus on digraphs or blending or any elements of phonemic awareness in an engaging and interactive way. Maybe even having these centers so that he was paired with a student who is at the grade level or higher grade level reading so they could work in a successful group and help the lower acheiving student. Group work is a plan I think he would benefit in if students knew how to work properly in groups, like Gibbons suggests. I think it is important for this student to also portray his ideas through his talk and writing and therefore think it would be helpful to have him respond to literature through talk and drawing as Tompkins suggests. This would allow him to not become frustrated but rather express his ideas and test for his level of comprehension. In addition, to build his writing skills I would have interactive writing for whole-class and small-group writing projects where he felt comfortable writing and felt that he had a personal connection to his writing. Overall, I think a personal connection with regards to this students reading and writing would greatly benefit him. I do not believe he would become as frustrated as quickly and would take more away from his reading and writing if the material was more culturally relevant to him. I think an increase in skills at centers and throughout other various group work would help this student become a stronger reader and writer however I also believe that if he is interested in the text and can relate to it then his skills will be more applied by him through his comprehension and writing.