Teaching Children

Teaching All Students

There are principles to how best to introduce literacy and reinforce literacy which are relevant to all children. In addition to these, approaches have been designed to address the specific needs of children who have been designated as part of a category: among which are economically disadvantaged students and learning disabled students. The first set of principles to bear in mind are those that apply to all students without distinction, a few of which are described below.

All children learn to read by reading. Having a wide array of reading materials available to them in class will be helpful for them to have selection choice, which has been proven to assist in a student’s love of reading. Instruction of texts should be “functional and contextual” (Gunning, 20) to build a bridge between previous knowledge and what is being discussed, as well as being able to create a wider reading experience by connecting the real world to the book world. Instruction should be clear, a class-room should be orderly, and instruction should be differentiated in order to reach all students. These are some of the basic principles to addressing all students standing and capacity toward literacy.

Economically disadvantaged students are one of many categories of students which require a more specific instructional approach. A first precept to know before addressing this group is to know that the difference in “reading achievement between students who attend high-poverty schools and those attending low-poverty schools is dramatic” (Gunning, 44). This can be the case for these students for many reasons, but among them is that literacy is not a priority in their homes, perhaps due to the over-arching responsibilities on parents for work, single-parent family stress and/or many other factors. This may result in their child, during their emerging literacy stage of development, to not be exposed to the written word through reading, or perhaps not even spoken to...