Supporting Struggling Readers in Navigating Grade-Level Texts

As a reading interventionist, I’ve found that intermediate students who present as struggling readers come to school with a variety of gaps in their existing knowledge of literacy. It may seem supportive to provide these students with less challenging material, but doing so is counterproductive—they need to learn how to navigate and comprehend the grade-level texts they’ll encounter throughout their school day. 

Here are some ways I support students to access grade-level text.

Supporting Vocabulary

Select multisyllabic words that also present new meanings to your struggling readers. Selecting vocabulary and using instructional methods to introduce its meaning is not a new strategy, but demonstrating for students how to approach reading multisyllabic words might be. 

One framework for teaching reading, Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction, involves using a speech-to-print approach, separating a multisyllabic word into syllables. Students read the sounds in each syllable and blend those sounds together to read a complete word, then reread the word as it would appear in the text. 

This method allows students to encounter five to 10 unfamiliar words, read them quickly prior to seeing them in a text, and discuss the word’s meaning within a few minutes of instructional time. For a temporary scaffold, you can highlight the word(s) in the text as well, bringing students’ attention to them as they read.

providing practice

All students have the capability to read grade-level texts if they have access to various layers of support. Here are some ways to help struggling readers practice, moving from most to least supportive.

1. Model fluent reading: When you demonstrate your own reading out loud, you allow all students to hear the text read with accuracy and prosody.

2. Echo reading: In this strategy, all students participate by repeating a line or paragraph after you, the teacher, read it out loud.

3. Choral reading: In choral reading, all students read in unison as you guide them, thereby creating a safe environment to practice working through a more complex text.

4. Partner reading: Place students in ranked order from highest to lowest reading ability (keep this info in a private document); split that list in half, and pair a higher-ability student with a partner who reads at a slightly lower ability level. Be sure that partners aren’t aware of who’s been designated stronger or weaker, but instead have assigned labels like “Partner 1” and “Partner 2.” Teach partners that Partner 1 should read first, and Partner 2 will follow. Invite students to work with their partner to alternate their reading of paragraphs or pages of a text.

In this model, students also serve as coaches, giving corrections and support to their peers if needed. Make sure you establish classroom expectations for partner work and provide examples of how to correct a partner constructively. At times, you may need to position certain partnerships near you or another teacher, put students into a triad, or temporarily match them with another pairing for additional support. 

5. PALS structure: Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies provide another way for students to read a text together. In this model, you pair students by ability, as above, and each partner gives feedback to the other as they take turns reading for five minutes. The stronger reader starts, and then the second reader rereads that same portion of the text to practice their accuracy and fluency. Then, the stronger reader provides feedback, if needed, and moves on to the next section.

Students should not be identified as the stronger or weaker reader, but instead given a role, as in the example above. You can use fun names for the partners like “chips and salsa,” depending on the age of your students. Once you’ve created pairs and given labels, it’s easy to assign one partner to read first and the other to read second. 

Planning for Barriers

Students must hold the meaning of each line of text as it’s connected to the following sentences. To do this complex work, they must recognize how sentences are constructed. Model extracting a sentence from the text and identifying any cohesive ties that exist. For example, if a sentence uses a name and then follows that name with a pronoun, students can draw an arrow or underline each word to show the relationship between them. 

There’s key language that allows the reader to understand what may come next. You can teach words like conjunctions (and, because, but, so) and linking words or phrases (however, although, apart from, in particular) found in clauses. Mark these for students so they can begin to recognize if a text is comparing, contrasting, adding ideas, and so on. 

Identifying these words or phrases, and teaching students how to recognize them and their meanings in text, sets students up to better understand the author’s intended meaning. It takes little instructional time to model a sentence or two, so this is an easy way to support growing readers. You can implement the temporary scaffold of marking those types of sentences in the text to draw students’ attention to them as they read.

Extracting Meaning

Paragraph shrinking involves identifying the gist of a sentence or paragraph. Students should develop a habit of stopping after each sentence or paragraph to pick out the most important “who” (subject) or “what” (topic), then explain the most important thing that happened to the who or what—ideally in 10 words or less (though up to 15 is usually acceptable).  

If students can identify these pieces in each section of text, they’re able to put those ideas together to explain what they read.  

helping struggling readers Tackle Grade-Level Text

The above methods offer a starting place for supporting even our most struggling readers. Teaching students strategies they can eventually use independently, when navigating grade-level text, is essential for their growth and success.

When students can confidently recognize parts of a text and appreciate that they can break down, dissect, and understand these potential barriers, they’re better able to become proficient readers.