THE MAGIC OF STUDENT LED READING INSTRUCTION

 

I recently bumped into a former student I had worked with as a Parprofessional. She was in fourth grade at the time. Now she is in high school. How time flies!

She is a real sweetheart, but has some fairly significant learning challenges. In fact, when I started working with her, she was considered unteachable, especially when it came to reading.  I was told to do my best with her but not expect too much. 

I found that  she knew the alphabet and what sounds most of the letters made, but that was about it. We started out doing the usual reading exercises, complete with books about cats and rats on mats with hats. She’d been going over this same material for years with very little to show for it. She informed me, she was sick and tired of  reading “stupid baby books,” or rather, not being able to read them. 

These books legitimately help beginning readers practice the basics of phonetics and phonemics and all that jazz. But this poor kid had been going over the same uninspiring reading material for years without making any progress. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try a different approach.

Since we did our sessions in the school library, I suggested finding something she wanted to read. There were two book series my young friend really liked, or at least liked looking at the pictures: Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious. Not your normal learning-to-read material. However, she perked right up when I suggested we give them a go.

We started out with me reading them and her just sitting next to me and following along as I pointed to the words while I read (a good practice with any beginning reader). Then, we progressed to me halting at the easier  words for her to read. Next, we started taking turns reading sentences. Finally, she read a whole page without any help. She beamed with pride and proceeded to read the rest of the book with only minor primpting.  Then, just to make sure she hadn’t simply memorized it,  I had her tackle a book we hadn’t read, and she sailed through that one, too!

It took time and lots of patient repetition. I neer see a book in either of those series without thinking of the hours I spent reading them with my young friend. Some of her favorites I could probably still quote verbatim. But, because it was what she wanted to read, she made the leap from being an “unteachable” reader to being confident about her reading ability. And, I am happy to report she is still a reader. When we met, she showed me the books her mother was buying for her.

So, when I claim that student led reading is magical, I have good reason to say so, and I know my  young reader friend would agree.