How to Start Choosing the Right Books for a Struggling Reader

Perhaps you have asked yourself these important questions:

“How do I choose the right books for my struggling reader?”

“Why is it so hard to find books for a reader who is struggling to read?”

“Is my child reading the right books for him or her?”

Working with dyslexic and struggling readers for over twenty years, one thing I have noticed is that parents often encourage their children to read books that are too difficult for them. While it’s understandable that parents want their child to read grade-level books, it’s counterproductive, because when the struggling reader gets frustrated, he or she won’t want to read at all.

I realized that I had to be very clear about exactly which books my students could comfortably read at the moment. These books are called independent reading level books.

How do you know when a book is at the correct level?

If your child misses too many words on a page, the story won’t make sense and the child will just get frustrated. There is a “rule of thumb” that if the reader misses more than five words on a page, that’s too many. But of course he must take this with a grain of salt, because on a page that is only twelve words long, even four words would clearly be too many.

One of the problems with finding the right book for your child is that even books that are supposed to be “easy reads” are clearly not easy for a struggling reader. Easy-to-read books can include all sorts of things the reader doesn’t already know. For example, they can blend multi-syllable words and words in the past tense. The struggling reader may not yet know that the past tense is written as /ed/ regardless of whether it sounds like: d/t/ed. For example, words like “learned”, “cooked” and “painted”. The child needs to be taught this.

A small percentage of children learn to read regardless of how they are taught, or apparently by “osmosis”; in other words, simply “out of the blue”. But, struggling readers need to be taught this explicitly. Struggling and dyslexic readers also benefit from being taught in a multisensory way. Don’t get me wrong, this certainly doesn’t mean these kids are any less bright; it simply means that they need to be taught in a way that makes sense to them. It seems that their brains are wired a little differently than your average child. However, realistically speaking, I believe that almost all children should be taught in an explicit and multisensory way.

As the parent of a struggling reader, you need to be aware of what your child is currently know. If you don’t have time to learn more about the reading process, then you need to find a good teacher/tutor for your child. If he or she is struggling right now, it’s not likely to fix itself. Often around second or third grade, parents begin to realize that their child needs extra help. A couple of my other articles will give you some initial information on how to start teaching your child to read.

If your child is guessing a lot of the words, it’s not the right book!

What you don’t want is for your child to guess words when reading. Clearly, this is not a good strategy for at least two reasons:

1. Most of the time the reader makes the wrong assumption. This piles up the rest of the sentence and slows the reader down.

2. When the reader guesses, it reinforces the idea that there is no strategy for reading words. Guessing most of the time is meaningless and therefore the reader is left with the idea that reading is meaningless.

Finding the right book at the right time is not easy.

I’d like to give you easy ways to find the right book at the right time for your struggling reader. Unfortunately, there are no really easy ways. I have spent years and years trying to perfect this for my students. But some things to think about are:

Check with your local children’s librarian; they are often a great resource.

Learn about certain authors who seem to be writing for struggling readers, or certain series that may be just the ticket for your struggling reader to start building reading fluency. The beginning reader will benefit at some point from reading the frog and toad series of books, as well as others by Arnold Lobel. A little later some of the Red pen chapter books as one of my favorites Max Malone wins a million and the children of the wagon they will make wonderful reading additions. These last two, however, are out of print and may only be available at your local library. nate the great is a particularly good series for kids just starting out with chapter books.

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