STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE
INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES

READING: THE MINORITY & AT-RISK LEARNER

Learning to read well is an important and necessary lifelong skill for all students. Reading is a complex activity. Students must learn how to both decode print and construct meaning. North Carolina's state assessment in reading focuses on reading comprehension in grades three through eight. Developing reading comprehension may be best served in interactive settings where teachers and students read and talk about the text to each other and write about and discuss what has been read. Students must read a lot, be read to, and talk to other students and the teacher about the text to build independence for personal growth and performance. Both reading and writing are interrelated processes in constructing meaning. Classrooms must maintain an environment where students are allowed to actually read, talk, and write about both fiction and nonfiction texts.

Many minority and at-risk students experience problems with reading. Part of the challenge in teaching students who demonstrate difficulty in reading is convincing them that they can learn to read, in spite to their experience to the contrary (Stahl, 1998). Students' personal belief about their inability to succeed at this task must be minimized as instruction moves forward. Reading skills and strategies must involve explicit teaching--showing students how we think when we read. Oftentimes, students who come to school with less receive less as they are involved in passive reading activities rather than active learning activities. Provide the means for turning the "I can't" attitude into an "I can" attitude. Minority and at-risk students may need more time and practice to develop reading competencies.

As a group, minority and at-risk students tend to score lower on the state's end-of-grade reading tests. Improved reading skills can significantly impact these students' performance.

"Must do" reading tips:

• Activate students' prior knowledge.
• Make connections between prior knowledge (personal experience, general world knowledge, specific topic knowledge) to new information in the text.
• Identify and clarify the purpose for the reading.
• Insist on students giving complete attention to the reading task.
• Make predictions as the reading task begins and proceeds.
• Incorporate a focus on vocabulary development and extension.
• Keep a constant check on understanding.
• Reread and think through confusing parts of the text.
• Stop reading only to repair or clarify understanding.
• Summarize the major points or ideas in the text.
• Use students' existing language as a springboard into Standard English.
• Evaluate understanding of what is read.

Reading is an active process. Engage mental processes before, during, and after reading!

Strategies

Strategies to practice frequently and consistently to support at-risk readers include: conducting read alouds, questioning, oral retellings, written retellings, picture or graphic retellings, writing-to-learn techniques, and various response to text activities for both fiction and nonfiction texts.

Ideas to try

• Have students listen to rap songs in order to develop a rule base for their creation. Now have the students teach the teacher and classmates the rules for writing their rap. Transfer this concept to the rules that govern the composition of other genres that will be studied.
  
  
• Have students listen to a variety of oral and written language styles and discuss the impact of those styles on the message and the likely effect on different audiences. Now recreate the texts or talks using different language styles appropriate for different audiences (i.e., a church group, academicians, rap singers, a feminist group, politicians, PTA, etc.).
  
  
• Have students interview various personnel officers in actual workplaces about their attitudes toward divergent styles in oral and written language. Debrief with a discussion of the interview results.
  
  
• Have students study and analyze book language. Have them transform the book language into a more familiar or friendly, everyday language that they are more accustomed to.
  
  
• Have students or groups of students create a bi-dialectal dictionary of their own language form and Standard English.
  
  
• Create a bulletin board with two sides. Display words or phrases from the students' writing. Label one side with "Our Heritage Language" and on the other side place the equivalent form labeled "Formal English."

(Ideas selected from Lisa Delpit's Other People's Children. 1995.)