Ulog # 19: Teacher's Blog| Students Struggle with Reading
Hello Steemians!!!
Today was such an exhausting day. Six section straight from 6 am till 12:20 pm. But still it was a fruitful day coz today I have started checking my students Reading Skills.
I am handling Grade 7 students and unfortunate to say that last year I had a couple of students who barely can't read. So as early as the second week of class I wanna know if my students has the capacity to read. In this way it is easier for me to identify those students that needs additional attention and be given remediation.
Reading is very essential coz if one can not read then all subjects can be affected by this. It will be hard for the student to comprehend in written instructions and understanding context through reading.
This is the selection I asked them to read. This is taken from our K-12 learning package for grade 7.
But I just let them read a portion of the selection since it's a bit long and I only have 1 hour in each class. Each section has 50+ students. I had to identify them by how fast or slow they read the story. I am not yet checking their level of comprehension in reading since it takes longer time. That would probably my next step after I am done assessing them with their reading speed.
From the selection there were a lot of mispronounced words. There were also words that were found difficult to read. For the level of my students the words from this selection is quite easy but surprisingly they find it difficult.
Here are the following words:
Unpronounced Words
✏ divided
✏ inhabited, inhabiting
✏ dwarfs
✏ nymphs
Mispronounced Words
✏ layers
✏ kind
✏ long-haired
✏ locally
✏ karibanga
✏ possess
✏ magical
✏ powers
✏ human
✏ eye
✏ Rajah
✏ whom
✏ child
Well as a teacher this situation saddened me for most of the mispronounced words are common and easy words. So far I was able to ask 20 students each section to read. And the sad news is among the 20 students 15 of them read very slow, 3 read at a normal speed and 2 read having a fast speed. For the 15 students who read slow 2 among those students still needs guidance in reading and couldn't read most of the words from the selection.
As an English teach this is truly a challenging job for me. It will be difficult to proceed with the topics I prepared if my students couldn't read well. So as this day end I gave those students who needs practice some activities to be done at home. Some reading activity that they have to read at home.
But as a teacher I too have an assignment to do, I just discovered that I have one student who has some kind of a speech defect. A 16-year old grade seven student. As I listen to him talk and read he couldn't form any word coz it seem like his tongue was twisted whenever he says something. So could barely understand him. I asked him about the matter and he nod when I asked him if it was difficult for him to say the words. Now I have to find ways on how to help him in any way I could.
Each year students learning is just deteriorating, it must have been the education system or maybe students study habits. We teachers each year had to face a lot of competition, why a competition it is because our students have so many distractions. Distractions like Social Media, Online Games, Chat Rooms, And their Peers. But as every year I always accept the challenge. Coz soon this students is gonna be Someone soon and not just anyone who says I couldn't succeed because of poverty.
Thank You Steemians..
