How we can help with diverse struggling writers.

 

Helping Diverse Readers and Writers

As teachers, it can be difficult for us to understand how we can help our ELL students. Although, with understanding our students backgrounds and having support for our students, we can help them succeed. 

The most important thing to start off with when it comes to helping ELL students are making sure we understand their backgrounds and prior knowledge. Many students where English is not their first language, learn different types of phonics and phonemic awareness activities than those who english is their first language. 

Vocabulary is another huge subject when helping students write. Those who are ELL learners will experience difficulties with comprehension skills when they are unaware of certain words. This is where word recognition is a huge aspect in helping ELL students. In order for them to become successful in writing, we must help them decode words and help them identify the different parts of words. 

When ELL students take their test for schooling, teachers must be aware of the delay in receiving the test. Not all of the test scores will be accurate to the time difference.

Get help from other sources! Collaborating with a team can be highly effective and will also help with the process of making accommodations to the curriculum when helping ELL students learn how to write. 

Walker-Dalhouse, D., Risko, V. J., Lathrop, K., & Porter, S. (2010). Helping diverse struggling readers through reflective teaching and coaching. The Reading Teacher, 64(1), 70–72. https://doi.org/10.1598/rt.64.1.11

What are the steps to take in order to help a struggling writer when writing a paper?

Steps to Help Struggling Writers

 

Figuring out how to help a struggling writers can be difficult. As I begin my my journey into my teaching career, I have noticed that it can be difficult to help a student who is struggling in writing. 

Many of my courses thus far have helped a lot with distinguishing different tactics of how we can help students who are having difficulties with reading, although how can we help them with writing. There is of course some type of connection between reading and writing, so knowing how we can help are students improve their writing is just as important.

As teachers, it is first important to identify what that child is struggling with first and where they are struggling.

• What is the students strength?
• Is this student meeting the grade standards for that state?
• How is the students work compared to the checklist for an assignment?

Promote these questions into your classroom teaching. When helping your students make sure you are:

• Providing checklists to your students so while they are writing, they have something to refer back to.
• Have the students brainstorm what they will talk about. When this is completed, look over their brainstorms to see how it is applying to the topic they should be writing about.
• Make sure the purpose is clear.
• Make sure as the teacher we are making the difference between editing and revising is clear. 
• Students should double check their work!

As this is just a beginning with helping with your students, take these tips and apply them to your classroom. I promise that with these steps you will see an improvement in your students writings!

Jagaiah, T., Howard, D., & Olinghouse, N. (2019). Writer's checklist: A procedural support for struggling writers. The Reading Teacher, 73(1), 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1802