Every teacher comes across students who struggle with reading. The lack of reading skills has a big impact on the students and can lead to students not liking the subject or fearing or hating studying or even attending classes.
A teacher's contribution to improving students’ reading abilities is crucial, especially in the initial years of schooling mainly because at this age, students gradually start learning tough words and complex sentences.
As a teacher, you should focus on helping students improve their reading skills. Understand where they are facing the problem and find out ways to help them out. However, finding out ways is easier said than done, especially when teaching online using an online classes app. Therefore, to help you out with this, here are some tips on how to help students with poor reading skills when teaching online.
- Arrange Reading Sessions
Arrange reading sessions probably once or twice a week. Let your students read aloud from the study material. Help them out with pronunciation and any difficulty that they may face.
This will not only improve their reading capabilities but also boost their confidence and public speaking skills. Also, do not forget to praise them and provide improvement tips.
- Promote Group Activities
Students who do not interact much or lack communication skills or lack confidence usually lack reading skills. Additionally, they suffer from a lack of socialising and receive poor marks.
Such students usually get less attention in class, because they prefer to keep quiet and socialize less. As a result, they lack reading skills. Now, learning sitting at home and taking lessons online using an education app makes things even worse for them. Therefore, as a teacher, you should try to encourage maximum participation of such students.
To do that, arrange group activities where students interact with each other. Arrange for plays and dramas, extempore speech, quizzes, etc. Also, assign group assignments to the students so that students interact with each other and work on the project together.
- Focus on Vocabulary Building
Not understanding the meaning of a word or not understanding sentences because of complex words being used is also a reason that students are poor at reading. For some, it might affect their confidence level because they cannot understand what the word means. Hence, they might start to develop a lack of interest in studies.
Therefore, helping students build their vocabulary is important. No matter which subject you teach, there will always be words for which the students will need help to understand. Explain the meaning, and promote the use of dictionaries in the class. Ask your students to frame sentences on their own using such words.
- Connect with Your Students’ Parents
Connect with their parents and ask them to help them read at home. Ensure that they read at least 2 pages of a chapter every day to help them get better. Also, inform them about where their child needs to concentrate and how they can help them at home.
Assign reading assignments to be practised at home and ask their parents to help and keep a check on them.
Final Thoughts
Having good reading skills helps students not only makes students confident but also improves their academic performance and helps them build good communication skills. As a teacher, it is your responsibility to focus on this skill and promote good reading habit among students to help them get better at it.
