by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 22, 2022 | Issues in Education, Phonics, Reading (SAT & ACT), Tutor Interviews, Tutoring, Tutors
At the beginning of March, I spoke with Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin at the Tests and the Rest podcast about some of the issues involved in helping struggling teenage readers prepare for standardized tests. The interview was originally scheduled for 25 minutes, but our conversation picked up so much steam that Amy and Mike decided to keep going and turn the interview into a two-parter.
The first part aired a few weeks ago, but I’ve been so busy that I actually forgot to post it (whoops!), but now that the second part has aired, I really don’t have an excuse.
Listen to Part 1, and Part 2. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 26, 2022 | Phonics, Tutoring
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed (for the third time!) by Amy Seeley and Mike Bergin on their podcast Tests and the Rest. During the course of what ended up being a marathon conversation about how to help struggling older readers—Amy and Mike ended up having to split our discussion into two parts!—we covered a wide range of topics, and it was only after we had finished that I realized I hadn’t gotten in quite as many practical tips as I would have liked. So obviously I had to post my top ones here instead. And if you’re interested in the full webinar (covering the basics of what’s come to be known as “the science of reading” and walking you through a full, age-appropriate phonics program for teenage readers), you can find it at video.thecriticalreader.com.
1) Have students put their finger on the page and follow along with the text as they read
I’ve written about this in a number of posts over the years, but this is one strategy I truly cannot emphasize enough. For students who habitually remove their eyes from the page, it is absolutely crucial to improving comprehension. You cannot understand what a text literally says if you’re not looking at the words!
To the greatest extent possible, the student’s finger should be under the word they are reading at any given time—it should not lag behind, trail off, or suddenly jump ahead. Hand-eye coordination: it’s not just for sports. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 9, 2021 | Blog, Issues in Education, Phonics, Tutoring, Tutors
At the beginning of the summer, after I did my series of posts for tutors who have unexpectedly found themselves working with struggling high-school readers trying to prepare for college admissions tests, I started putting together a presentation for a webinar to address the major issues at play and demonstrate some of the exercises that can be used to help remediate such students.
Alas, my summer and the beginning of my fall got hijacked by my IELTS books, followed in rapid succession by necessary updates to my GMAT, ACT English, and ACT Reading books (followed by the IELTS again).
I’m happy to announce, however, that I finally seem to be back on track and am planning to record the webinar in the next week or so, and then people can access it at their convenience. I’m also doing my best to put together an accompanying materials pack that includes all the exercises covered. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 28, 2021 | ACT Reading, Phonics, Reading (SAT & ACT), Tutoring, Tutors
In a recent post, I talked about the challenges that (ACT) tutors often face when working with struggling readers; I also discussed how different types of problems can signal difficulties in different component skills that combine to produce reading. In this post, I’m going to cover how to identify a reading problem and provide some strategies for determining whether it stems from decoding, aural comprehension, or both.
To quickly review, the Simple View (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) states that General Reading Ability = Decoding x Aural Comprehension, with the weaker factor limiting overall skill.
Proficient teenage-adult readers decode at approximately 200 words per minute, or the speed of speech; however, many struggling readers never learned sound-letter combinations well enough to “map” them orthographically—that is, to store them in their brains for automatic retrieval. As a result, they read slowly and dysfluently, and may guess at, skip, misread, reverse, add, or omit letters/words.
On the other side, weak vocabulary (particularly words denoting abstract concepts); difficulty making sense out of complex syntax; and poor general knowledge can cause students who are solid decoders to have trouble understanding what they read.
Problems can be restricted to either of these areas; however, they often involve both factors and together produce a general reading problem. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 22, 2021 | ACT Reading, Blog, Phonics, Tutoring, Tutors
Image by GOLFX, Shutterstock
When Breaking the Code, the reading-instruction group I helped found last summer, held its most recent workshop last week, I stuck an announcement in my newsletter almost as an afterthought. A test-prep tutor had participated in our previous workshop and seemed to have gotten a lot of out of it, and it occurred to me that others might be interested. Nevertheless, I was a bit taken aback at the number of inquiries I received from ACT tutors—more emails, incidentally, than I got from elementary-school teachers.
In retrospect, this should not have been at all surprising, but I guess that given all the current backlash over standardized testing, I neglected to realize how many students are still getting tutored for college-admissions exams, and how many tutors are encountering the exact same kinds of reading problems I repeatedly saw. The issues I discuss here do also apply to the SAT (and any other standardized test), but I’m focusing on the ACT here because it brings a set of specific issues into particularly sharp focus. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 10, 2021 | Phonics, Tutoring, Tutors
If you’re a tutor who regularly encounters students with reading problems and would like to have more tools to help them, Breaking the Code, the reading-instruction group I co-founded, will be holding a workshop on Saturday-Sunday 2-4:30pm, May 15-16, 2021 (via Zoom).
We’ll be covering a variety of exercises designed to strengthen letter-sound understanding and to improve speed, accuracy, and fluency. These are tools that can be used with students of any age, not just beginning readers, and that can go a long way toward remediating high-school aged students who habitually guess, switch, misread, insert, or omit words.
If you are interested in participating, please email us a brief description of your background and interest at breakingthecodeallways@gmail.com.
