Reading Skills

During my five years as a teacher I have taught many different classes, of varying ability. Teaching a class of lower ability pupils is always challenging as you need to not only engage the pupils, but overcome some of their weaknesses before you even start the subject matter.

Some of these challenges can be overcome, poor behaviour and attention span for example, but one that I have struggled with, and still do to this day, is poor reading skills. I have a fleeting knowledge of the learning styles, visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic, but without the ability to read to a reasonable level I find that no matter what the topic, I am at a loss of how to help the pupil progress. (Please note: I am also aware of the level of criticism the learning styles models has received but thought it worth mentioning).

Every lesson I teach has some kind of written work, or at least the reading of instructions, results etc. The National Curriculum that schools follow, as a whole gives the pupils a well rounded subject knowledge, but it is not for everyone. If a pupil cannot read then surely this must be the schools number one priority. These students should not be spending their time in lessons they cannot interact or understand. Perhaps I am being short-sighted, and no doubt someone more qualified in this area could come up with a dozen arguments to why this is incorrect, but the one I know is that I am not trained sufficiently to help these children progress in the way they should.

It is frustrating to have to teach a topic involving maths, and the comprehension of a written set of questions to know full well that this subject matter cannot be accessed by half of the class I am teaching. Perhaps I just need more training, though I am unsure who is going to pay for that, what with the budgets for schools being as tight as they are, then again, I think that might be another blog post, for another time.