Teachers who work with high school students are all too aware that not all children learn to read by the time they leave elementary school. Many students in high school particularly grade 7 and 8 have reading difficulties.
One of the greatest challenges that they face today is how to help all students to become effective, strategic readers who read and write enthusiastically and purposefully. They need to know how to use a wide variety of teaching methods, materials, and strategies to help children learn to read, monitor and document students’ progress, strengths, and needs, diagnose difficulties in reading and related areas, apply corrective instruction when appropriate, and prevent literacy problems from arising in the future.
In order to do so, teachers need well-informed diagnostic judgment and the tools and strategies to monitor students’ development effectively. Such strategies and tools must be flexible and practical, tapping the kinds of everyday reading and writing that students use in and out of the classroom.
Teachers must also undertake corrective instruction within the context of regular ongoing instruction, without setting problem readers apart from others who can read well.
Today, new emphases on authentic assessment that accurately represents what students can do challenge our thinking about measurement and evaluation. Simultaneously, many teachers are struggling to define ways to increase student achievement and ensure accountability to the stakeholders. Today’s teachers are expected to use continuous developmental assessment devices; to use portfolios of student work to demonstrate and evaluate student achievement; to teach reading using authentic literature and a wide variety of teaching methods; to integrate reading and writing across all curricular areas; and to help all students, regardless of their level of literacy, to become effective, strategic readers. These things provide valuable information to the teachers on how they will be able to assess students and help them to become effective and strategic readers.
REFERENCES:
Center for Applied Linguistics: http://www.cal.org
Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at The University of Texas at Austin:
By: May S. Flores | T-II | Hermosa National High School
