How does a teacher determine a struggling student?
- Struggling fourth grade students show symptoms similar to younger students that are having trouble reading: poor spelling, inaccurate decoding of new words, mispronunciation, and difficulty remembering or recalling new words
Important concepts for teachers to know:
- Phonological processing: encompasses many abilities that have to do with speech perception and production; phoneme awareness; and memory, retrieval, and naming functions
- Phonological awareness: ability to divide a word into spoken syllables, onset-rime segments, and individual phonemes; component of phonological processing most related to reading and spelling
- Speech sounds that are similar can be confusing for children. Those that are left to figure it out themselves may not be able to distinguish the speech sounds in words.
How should teachers help these struggling students?
- Through direct teaching and structured practice
What are some examples of helpful practices?
- Ask students whether the word has been correctly pronounced
- Have students watch as you pronounce new words
- Pay special attention to individual speech sounds if similar-sounding words are being confused
- Provide written, pictorial, or graphic support when spoken language must be processed
- And many more! Visit the original source listed below for more helpful suggestions and deeper explanations.
