Strategies to Improve Reading Skills of Students

Highlights:

• Students are not able to read or remember sight words when those are introduced in isolation.
• Decoration of the walls with images and their corresponding words allow students to associate words with the pictures and read them holistically.
• Students took effort individually in reading and learning and were excited to complete tasks given to them. A chart that marked their progress helped the students do a self-assessment along with providing motivation to them for learning more.

School Background:

Most of the students in my school are first-generation learners. A major issue that the students face is the lack of co-operation from the parents for school activities.

Key Areas of Interest:

• Developing reading skills through wall decoration.
• Organizing school cultural activities.
• Providing the students a platform to practice for participating in the cultural events.

Strategies to improve the reading skills of the students:

As a teacher of English language, I used to adopt a certain strategy to teach the language to the students—especially to improve their reading skills. However, after realizing that the strategy did not provide adequate results, I shifted to different methods, which brought about a positive change in my class. In this article, I will briefly discuss the previous strategy that I had adopted and explain in detail the new strategies that I have adopted to enhance the reading skills of my students.

Previous Strategy:

In the previous academic year, I was responsible for teaching the students of Class 3. The students often found it too difficult to read a lesson or a poem on their own. So, I taught them sight words of their learning level. Since, previously, I was not able to make my students read all the words from the lesson, I decided to begin focusing on sight words. I wrote two and three letter words on flash cards and pasted them on the wall. I introduced nearly ten sight words to the students in the month of July. Later, in August, I introduced another ten words. I would make the students revise those words every day after the class prayer.

However, I did not see any positive impact of this method on the students. They never picked up those twenty words. Therefore, I discontinued this strategy and carried on with the traditional teaching method.

Current Strategy 1—Sight words through wall decoration:

In the present year, I decided to teach more words continuously. I planned to decorate the walls of the classroom with pictures of the scenes and the different characters from the textbook. The words corresponding to the pictures were pasted on them. As new lessons were taught, more pictures and words were added. The previous words were not removed.

The classroom, as a result, became very colourful and attractive with pictures of clouds, butterflies, trees, balloons, and other such things. This encouraged the students to read the words that were pasted on the wall with interest. The students would touch the picture cut-outs and feel those for themselves. The wall decorations brought about a positive atmosphere in the classroom.

I could see that the new strategy enabled the students to read more words at a time. The students, who were previously unable to read two and three letter words, were now eager to read the words from the wall. Later, when the students were made to read the passages from the textbook, they were able to identify and relate to the words that were on the wall.

Strategy 2—Word Basket:

To further strengthen the reading skills, spelling accuracy, and vocabulary of the students, I introduced the word-basket activity.

Earlier, I used to write down new words (5 to 10) on the black board. I would read out the words and ask the students to repeat them along with me. However, when I asked the students to read the new words again from the lesson, some of them found them difficult to read. To get over this problem, I planned to teach those words using a new method—word baskets.

Word baskets are small baskets which contain cards having new words from the lessons. These baskets are fixed on the side of each desk. Every basket would contain more than 5 words. The students from each group were to read and memorize the spellings of the words in their given baskets. The group which has completed the words in their basket were made to exchange their word cards with other groups. Of course, there were some students who took more time than the others to learn the words. But, the others in the group helped these students, so that the whole group was able to learn those words quickly as a whole. Bench leaders were allotted in each bench. During the lunch hours, bench leaders were to take the words from the basket and read it out. All the students were made to practice the words. And, finally, the group that learnt all the words first would be appreciated.

Progress:

As a result of introducing sight words through wall decorations and word baskets, the students were gradually able to read comfortably, and they even started forming sentences using these words. They were able to identify the words that they learnt when they occurred in different lessons of the textbook. Thus, these two strategies brought about a progress in the reading skills of my students.

Strategy to help students learn multiplication tables easily:

Learning multiplication tables form the building blocks for mathematical calculation.

The students of my class used to recite the tables in both the forward and reverse orders during prayer time. They would also do it during the class hours as well. Yet, some students found it difficult to remember the tables. I too found it quite difficult to keep track of the students—as to which student knew which tables. At this juncture, I found the need to provide individual attention to my students. And, this is how the idea of tables chart came to my mind.

The tables chart consisted of a chart having the names of all the students written in a column. Numbers from 1 to 12 were written horizontally at the top. When a student learnt a table, the block corresponding to that number against the student’s name would be coloured by him or her.

Advantages of the strategy:

• The chart motivated the students to learn the tables. They were eager to learn all the tables and mark them as “learnt” on the chart.
• The chart served as a tool for self-assessment for the students. They could now view their current level as well as compare their progress with their peers.
• As a teacher, I was able to keep a track of the students’ learning of the tables. It allowed me to give specific home works to the students as per their needs.
• The chart served as an assessment tool for me as well.

This strategy worked wonders in my classroom. The students quickly learnt the tables from 1 to 12. They further went on to learn the tables of 13, 14, 15, and so on.

Conclusion:

As a teacher, I realized the need to adopt specific strategies that would be suitable for the needs of the learners. Be it language or mathematics, appropriate strategies can make the teaching-learning process easier. The successful implementation of the above three strategies serve as a proof for this.

Teacher: P Thamizhselvi, PST, GPS Nettapakkam