WORKING WITH STRUGGLING READERS

There will always be students in your class who will have difficulty developing and organizing ideas and word choice, writing complex sentences and effective transitions, spelling, capitalizing and punctuating. Such students struggle with the writing process and using writing strategies effectively, and so need to learn more about writing and have more opportunities to practise writing. The best way to help these students is to prevent their difficulties in the first place by providing high-quality classroom instruction and adding an intervention, if it is needed (Cooper, Chard & Kiger, 2006). In order to provide that type of high-quality instruction, you will have to utilize the following five (5) components, if you want to build the confidence of your struggling writers and ensure that they are successful.

• MINI-LESSONS: These can be delivered through PowerPoint visuals or short video clips, to teach students about the writing process, writing strategies and skills, qualities of good writing and writing genres.
• INTERACTIVE WRITING: You review strategies and skills through a class blog and monitor students' knowledge, while students work collaboratively to write words and sentences on concept maps, in order to reinforce what they are learning.
• DAILY OPPORTUNITIES TO WRITE: Provide opportunities for your struggling students to write through word processing and e-mail messaging, and share information about books they are reading.
• CONFERENCES: Communicate with individual students through their blogs to discuss their writing , the writing process they use and how they view themselves as writers. You want them to think metacognitively and reflect on the progress they have made.
• DAILY OPPORTUNITIES TO READ: Allow students time to read books at their own reading level using e-story books; and through vodcasting let them hear you read aloud high-quality stories and informational books that they can't read independently.