Students who are reading below the expected grade level for his or her age must be provided with a program using a variety of instructional approaches. Recent research suggests that because the reasons why students have difficulty reading are complex, no one prescription or approach will work for all.
In the past literature was viewed as an enrichment course and only the skilled reader was allowed to take the course. Unfortunately this practice only reinforced the existing condition. The skilled reader became richer by reading interesting stories while the poor reader was assigned to worksheets and dull basal selections and continued along unmotivated and unsuccessful.
It is critical that students be motivated to read and have an interest in the subject matter. There are many highinterest low readability trade books available. They not only provide students with meaningful reading experiences but present them with an awareness of high quality literature in order to develop a lifelong connection of reading as a source of pleasure and enrichment. A students own interest in the subject of selection, attitude towards reading are significant factors in determining the appropriateness of a particular selection.
Quality young adult literature provides students with a variety of learning experiences. It meets the students needs and growth level. It stimulates thought and imagination. It carries an important message. It introduces the students to great works and authors. It develops a lifelong desire to read for pleasure and enrichment.
Students must be thinking and actively seeking meaning while they are reading. Remedial students need more practice. Reading comprehension depends on a common body of information between the readers and the writer. Remedial students sometimes do not have that body of information or in the classroom they do not have enough in bridging the gap between their lives and the life in the story. Students need to be prepared for the literary and cognitive demands of complex materials. They must develop effective reading strategies such as accessing prior knowledge, rereading, asking questions and making and checking predictions. Instead they are preoccupied with sounding out and pronouncing words. Remedial reading students must be guided from the very beginning of the lesson through a variety of prereading activities. The design of this curriculum unit is to bridge the gap of common body of information between the reader and the writer. Part of the prereading exercises would be to implement strategies and activities of part one objectives of promoting selfesteem and understanding the family structure.
A strategic reader blends prior knowledge with ideas from a book to construct a full understanding of the story. Before reading recalling what is already known about the topic is an important reading behavior. It allows the reader to make inferences, understand casual relationships and make predictions about what will come next.
This unit will employ a variety of instructional approaches. The activities will include both visual and auditory aids. It is highly recommended that teachers before implementing this unit, write out suggested charts for literary skills. Through my teaching experiences charts serve as excellent instructional aids and are very functional with remedial students for reinforcement and review. Teaching should be simple, clear and consistent and by employing the DirectedReading-Thinking Activity Method students will develop a sensitivity to the literary elements of the novel and at the same time have an understanding of themselves and the theme of the family in literature.