Every child can read

Eight-year-old Camille used to struggle with reading. Even after getting promoted to the third grade, she could only read on the first grade level — meaning she could only decode phonetically regular monosyllable words in texts. She used to read at a rate of less than 20 words per minute.

Camille, a student of Eucon International School, is a story of tutorial success, says teacher Ruth McLaughlin. “She jumped a hurdle in the last couple of weeks,” says McLaughlin, who is originally from South Carolina.

By the end of twelfth week since she started attending special remedial classes, Camille is able to read from a third grade book, and reads more than 30 words per minute.

“It wasn’t a matter of learning for the first time. She just didn’t have a good first grade foundation,” McLaughlin says.

What a struggling reader needs, she says, is a good combination of proper teaching approach, the child’s willingness to be taught, and an atmosphere conducive to learning.

“We found that it’s just a matter of paying attention. We try to get the students to concentrate. Children who have attention deficit disorder only need discipline, the right kind of teacher and the right kind of environment,” McLaughlin says.

Eucon International offers special remedial classes to students having problems with reading and spelling. Struggling students are given the opportunity to attend a two-hour session during school days.

“If a child can’t read, that would affect the whole education They won’t be able to follow instruction nor comprehend their assignments. Every child should be able to read by second grade,” says McLaughlin.

McLaughlin applies the phonic method on struggling readers. Phonics involves the application of letter-sound associations to unknown words in text.

Recent studies have shown how phonics can help young readers develop approximate pronunciations of unknown words. Simply using sounds to come up with the pronunciation of a word is not enough; they must check their pronunciation against the text and their own experience to see whether it makes sense.

Camille’s huge progress in reading, McLaughlin also says, confirms the power of making learning a fun game — an approach commonly used by modern teachers.

Sorting pictures, for example, allows children to use their knowledge of familiar concepts to attend to sound in words, according to the book, Every Child a Reader. This activity “begins with attention to initial consonants and extends to word endings and vowels within words. To make the sound associations with the letters m and d, for example, a sorting activity might use pictures of a dog and a money as reference cards. Individually and or in pairs, children take a set of pictures of objects that begin with m and d and sort them, saying ‘Does d-d-dinosaur start like m-m-monkey or d-d-dog?'”

McLaughlin makes it more fun by drilling her students on phonics through the use audio and video tapes. “I let them read aloud and listen to themselves,” she says.

Little incentives inspire her students to work hard. “I would give Camille a sticker for every achievement,” McLaughlin says.

But teaching and learning should not be confined within the classroom, McLaughlin says. “We need intensive support from parents. We can’t do everything.”