Article: Struggling Readers and Technology

I read an excellent article today that I'm really excited to share with you all. This article from the journal The Reading Teacher, entitled "Stories About Struggling Readers and Technology", is by Rebecca Anderson and Ernest Balajthy. The article gives four stories of this type. I found three of them to be particularly pertinent to our class and/or situations... I'll save the best for last!

First I'd like to share about the section 'Recreational Reading'. In this section a teacher, Mark, is called in to help out his local church in an effort to save their after school reading program. This reading program seems to have all the right elements (including funding) that should make it successful: two rooms in a community center, comfortable atmosphere with beanbags and comfy chairs, a library of trade books, computers, internet access, a software program called Accelerated Reader (www.renlearn.com/ar), and 10 volunteers to help for 3 hours each afternoon. The big problem that Mark identified with this situation is that they were relying too heavily on the software program to do all the work. After a student had read their book they would then complete a quiz on it through the program. The staff had not been properly trained in how to best develop reading and literacy. "A computer-based test is not a replacement for well-considered reading activities...A key component in blending technology with books is the maintenance of community building"(Anderson & Balajthy, 2009). So in the end they needed to use technology as part of their program, not the whole thing, which is also incredibly important for classroom teachers to consider as well.

A second section discussed the use of blogs in coordination with struggling readers and preservice teachers. A teacher realized that many of her minority students had little experience with quality literature depicting different ethnicities. She created a blog page for 25 different titles over the summer and then paired two students and a preservice teacher to a book and therefore to a blog. Throughout the course of reading the book the students and the preservice teacher (both reading the book) had an online literature circle. There were guidelines to the blog but the students took a creative spin to make it their own. I thought this was a great idea. In class we've been discussing the use of lit circles as student to student through blogs but I love the idea of using preservice teachers!

The final section I'd like to share is about electronic texts. The teacher in this selection realized she was going to have a very wide variety of readers for her next school year and little to no funding. She then spent her summer finding electronic texts to meet the needs of her students. She found the students' reading levels, found different electronic book sources and then determined the levels of those books. I've included her list of websites below. I thought this was a great idea, especially in the times of no funding!

International Children's Digital Library: www.childrenslibrary.org
Between the Lions: pbskids.org/lions
*Classics for Young People: www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/storclas.html
Project Gutenberg: www.gutenberg.org
Talking Book Library: www.talkingbooklibrary.net/Matrix.htm

*I tried all the sites and for this one you need an account.


Anderson, R, & Balajthy, E (2009). Stories About Struggling Readers and Technology. The Reading Teacher. 62, 540-542.