At a time when rates of reading for pleasure are down nationwide and policymakers are beginning to brainstorm ways to help older students who are struggling with reading, Education Week wanted to hear from the field about what they think could help.
We asked online users on LinkedIn what kinds of supports they’d want to see from parents to help older students who struggle with reading. Here’s some of their top suggestions.
Set aside reading time
Spend reading time together and help them understand what they read!
Have family reading time together, where everyone reads their own book. If your kids don't see you reading, they will wisely call you out on your hypocrisy.
I would like to see parents engaging in reading with their children. Any form of engagement elevates reading from a school mandate to a family value.
Foster parent/teacher partnerships
It takes both the parents and teachers to work together in building the additional learning support that would benefit the students and set additional space and time for students to develop their reading skills. Integrate writing as well as reading together. This helps students to understand and describe stories that they are reading or have read but also get them to reflect and disclose phrases and words they struggled with. It helps to understand both language and the vocabulary but also grammar. It’s important for parents to discuss their child’s difficulties and together put a personal plan together for each individual child so that they are encouraged and supported.
A respect for education and school makes all the difference. Unfortunately by the time the students reach high school, many parents step back. Now the message is that there's an entire part of the child's life that doesn't matter as much. I can count on both hands the number of parents I met (outside of discipline issues) the entire time I taught high school. Ask them what they're learning. Talk to them about their education. Maybe if they see it matters to the parents it'll matter more to them.
Support diverse reading experiences
Graphic novels play a good role in word recognition while it is accompanied with the text, for read-along sessions. I have always read aloud to my older students who struggle to decode. Hearing the text read correctly still does benefit the older students; they too will mimic the fluency expectations. I think parents should and can read aloud to older kids too.
And read aloud together. We read "Macbeth" with our daughter. My husband read all the good male roles, I read all the bad male roles, my daughter read all the female roles. We pulled out a cape or two, and a big kettle, and a couple of swords. We didn't just read, we declaimed! We stood up and gestured wildly! Our daughter came home and said, "The kids in my class HATE 'Macbeth.' How can anyone hate 'Macbeth?'" I said, "They're not reading 'Macbeth' the way we are."
Reading requires a number of different subskills that are clearly identified. I think that helping parents identify where the issues are so that they can partner with the teacher makes sense. Reading aloud helps as well. Another thing to consider is the whether the child has a learning disability and techniques for dealing with those without labels. ... Another population to think about are children who do not have English as their primary language. Parents sometimes want to help their kids but don’t know what to do. ... If students are older and they can’t read, they are most likely dealing with some shame and loss of confidence. They might think that they are “stupid” when they are not. They’ve probably been made fun of or have spent years hiding through various means. Those emotional issues are extremely important to address. Learning about common patterns as well as how to adopt a growth mindset (which can happen at any age) will serve them well in the long run.
