I had the pleasure of seeing Lori Jamison Rog present at the Literacy Summit this past weekend.  She has some practical suggestions as to how to support our struggling readers.

Struggling readers need to read MORE than other readers. 

Our strugglers have GREAT avoidance skills, such as taking a long time to choose a book, going to the bathroom during silent reading, acting out to avoid work, just to name a few.

Struggling readers need to practice sight words, as this will help with fluency when it comes to connected text.

These kids need CHOICE over their reading. 

They need time to read books that are not too difficult, AND they need tiptoe books – books that are a bit difficult, but someone is helping them with the text. 

They need to hear a lot of read alouds (all kids do!) and building their background knowledge is key. 

Here is a booklet from Lori’s workshop.  Her ideas come from her book “Struggling Readers:  Why Band-Aids Don’t Stick and Worksheets Don’t Work”.

Really, these are just great tips for ALL our students!

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