Module 6: Instructional Challenge

Next year, you will be teaching in a school where the vast majority of students did not meet standard on your state's criterion-referenced test and where more than 75% of the students are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. What are some specific universal literacy strategies you may implement to ensure students success? 

I do not teach at a Title 1 school and I am lucky to have many of my students come from homes that parents read to their children, and have many books for them to choose from.  However, there are students that pass through my classroom doors that do not come from this situation.  

In order to ensure success for students that did not meet the standard on the state test and qualify for free and reduced price meals I would implement a comprehensive literacy program that uses modeling, conferencing, and writing within reading will enhance students' ability to comprehend texts.  Students need to have access to many books and need to hear fluent and proficient readers read aloud.  This will open the door for valuable discussion of skills such as prediction techniques, connections, and vocabulary.   Reading skills need to be taught within context to help the student understand how to apply the skill.  Isolating skills without context does not allow the student a chance to practice the skill while reading. Utilizing shared reading can limit the number of miscues and help them create meaning and students do not feel isolated as they read.  

Limiting the number of worksheets that promote skills, especially phonics, will allow the students to ask themselves critical questions such as "does this make sense" and using their emerging letter sound knowledge to determine unfamiliar words.  Worksheets promote skill and drill activities and not application.  

These students need opportunities to make analogies between unfamiliar and familiar words by using the print.  Using word families will help them increase their vocabulary and help them practice what would 

The most important strategy that students need when learning to read is to use their background knowledge.  Many students that are in low income communities do not have the opportunity to take trips with their families and experience different places.  It is up to the teacher to evaluate the students' background knowledge on a particular topic and increase that background knowledge in order for them to make connections to the text.  

My grade level has a minimum requirement of reading each night.  While this may not seem ideal, we do allow them to choose what they read in an effort to encourage them to read for longer amounts of time.  There are times, when we assign readings that are on topics we have been studying in class.  Students respond to higher level questions using Survey Monkey and we evaluate their responses.  We do not choose readings for this topic that we have not provided sufficient background knowledge of.