Helping students acquire the basic literacy skills is one of the key tasks of a teacher, and the reading skills are at the top of the teacher’s priority list (McNamara, 2012).
Indeed, the significance of reading skills cannot possibly be overestimated – the speed and efficacy of information processing, which a student is capable of, defines their further academic progress, as well as communication with peers, teachers and even family members.
Still, despite the obvious significance of reading, a number of students refuse to acquire reading skills, displaying no interest in reading whatsoever. The given phenomenon is quite understandable, seeing how modern media allows for a much faster and easier acquisition of information.
As a result, a range of students fail to develop proper reading habits and face a number of difficulties in their academic life due to inability to process the information acquired from printed media.
A graphic example of the case in point, the reading progress of one of my students, Logan, is worth taking a closer look at. By learning to motivate Logan to read, one can possibly find the approach towards an average student with a similar reading problem.
When it comes to defining the key issues about Logan’s unwillingness to acquire basic literacy skills, one must note a complete absence of motivation in his learning process. He is obviously incapable of seeing any benefits of being literate. To start with, it is necessary to conduct an assessment of Logan’s evolution as a reader.
To carry out an evaluation of Logan’s current literacy status, as well as measure the progress that he has made so far, it will be required to utilize such tools as oral retell and oral response (Independent reading assessment tools user’s guide, 2005).
The choice of the assessment tools was predetermined by the fact that the student’s reluctance towards reading will only be enhanced once the teacher will make him keep logs or create journal entries on the process that he is not fond of.
At present, it is crucial to work on Logan’s motivation, and an evaluation of his advance, which will be split into several key stages. These steps will allow for a very accurate definition of the problem and the development of an appropriate solution.
The purpose of the given assessment will concern checking Logan’s reading skills, comparing them to those that he used to have several weeks ago, and developing a flexible teaching strategy, which may possibly help motivate Logan to start reading.
Designing the assessment, one must keep in mind that it must help not only evaluate the progress that the student has made so far, but also isolate the key factors that hinder further progress.
Therefore, the assessment must be split into two key parts, the first one concerning the student’s reading experience, and the latter evaluating the significance of other information sources, which are at Logan’s disposal regularly.
The first part of the assessment will concern testing the student’s practical skills. Logan will have to read a short text, answer the related multiple choice questions, as well as general ones, retell the story and come up with his variant of the story continuation. Thus, Logan’s key weaknesses in reading may be located.
Even though some of his reading skills, such as the ability to understand the meaning of an unknown word, have already been defined, a more thorough examination of his abilities should be carried out. The next part of the assessment will concern the student’s attitude towards reading in general.
Thus, the reasons for Logan to ignore the opportunities that reading provides for him will be defined. The given part of the test will contain general questions and presuppose that the student should be honest about his reading experiences.
Finally, the third part of the test will contain the elements of both textual and visual information. Thus, it will be possible to figure out whether Logan’s unwillingness to read has affected his skills of acquiring, processing, interpreting and using information (International Reading Association, 2010).
The results of the assessment have shown that Logan does not seem to make any progress because most of the strategies used to enhance his reading skills do not address the problem that Logan experiences with reading.
According to the assessment results, Logan realizes the partial interchangeability of traditional and modern media; as a result, he uses modern media, such as social network and forums, in order to acquire information and have new experiences.
Basically, he has found the substitute for reading, which he does not have any reason to abandon, from his point of view. Although Logan seems to make quite an efficient use of the information that is handed to him, he seems to have rather poor memory, which needs further training.
While Logan is rather smart and is clearly capable of managing most of the information that he receives, acquiring reading skills is an essential step in one’s life, which he must not skip.
The test results have shown that Logan has issues with not only remembering, but also interpreting the information that has been offered to him.
In other words, Logan can read a text, yet he will hardly be able to answer the related questions or to use the information in the text in order to solve a specific problem. In other words, Logan does not seem to understand the purpose of reading.
To address the issue efficiently, it will be necessary to both develop a system of exercises and a range of tests, which will help evaluate the student’s progress over time.
It will be crucial that Logan should be able to see his own progress and realize how far the exercises will advance him (Barden, 2013). More to the point, the exercises that will be designed will have to convince Logan that reading is a very exciting process.
The aforementioned idea about exercises improving Logan’s motivation brings the teacher to the main point regarding Logan’s poor reading performance.
As the assessment has shown, he lacks enthusiasm due to the absence of encouragement from either of his parents, as well as the fact that reading is not the priority among his friends as well.
According to the results of the assessment, Logan lost his interest in reading after his friends started making fun of him being excited about the books that are traditionally considered “girly” (e.g., fairytales, stories with girls or young women as the lead characters, e.g., Cinderella, etc.).
Hence, it is imperative that Logan should get positive reading experiences, which will erase the negative ones and help the student improve his opinion of himself as a reader.
Reference List
Barden, C. (2013). Reading well. Grades 6–8. New York, NY: Lorenz Educational Press.
Independent reading assessment tools user’s guide (2005). Web.
International Reading Association (2010). Standards for reading professionals — revised 2010. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
McNamara, D. S. (2012). Reading comprehension strategies: Theories, interventions, and technologies. Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press.