ABSTRACT
As you learned throughout Section IV, comprehension is the ultimate purpose of reading. However, even with purposeful instruction, some students will struggle to understand what they read. This happens for a variety of reasons. Some students have problems with basic reading skills that impede their ability to access the text that they are trying to understand. Some students do not have, or do not know how to activate, knowledge from prior experiences that they need to make important connections to themselves, other texts, and the world in general (Jennings, Caldwell, & Lerner, 2010). Additionally, some students enter school with limited vocabulary knowledge compared to their peers and this knowledge gap increases exponentially over time (Graves, 2000; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011). Even acquisition of academic language, or the “language of schooling,” is difficult for many at-risk learners due to its decontextualized nature, complexity, and unfamiliarity to many students (Berkeley & Taboada Barber, 2015). Finally, many struggling readers fail to approach text strategically, making their efforts at comprehension both inefficient and ineffective. Left unaddressed, challenges with reading increase over time and can impede student motivation to attempt reading tasks and increase anxiety. Compared to peers, minority students, students living in poverty, students who are learning English, and students with disabilities generally have more limited vocabularies and understand less of what they read (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006). Students who are learning English as a second language or who have language-based disabilities are especially at-risk for problems with reading comprehension. Teachers will need to be prepared to address the unique needs of these struggling readers.
