Creating an Environment for Success

Reading instruction is one of the most challenging and rewarding responsibilities of teachers of students with visual impairments. Finding strategies that motivate readers is a challenge, but the spark of inspiration for struggling readers often comes from a classroom environment that provides opportunities for success. After an environment of literacy has been established, the students are given the freedom to see themselves as successful readers rather than failures. Within such an environment, strategies are as varied as the individual students with which we work. Joe, Charlie, and Cathy have all been students of mine over the years. They would all be classified as struggling readers, but they were as unique in their reading abilities as they were unique as children. All three students were congenitally blind, learned braille as their first and only reading medium, and attended a specialized school for children with visual impairments. Joe came into my fifth-grade class with no interest in books and very little desire to read anything. He occasionally made slightly negative comments about reading activities. Joe told me that when he was younger, he would just pretend to read during reading time. After reading his educational history and talking with his previous teacher, I knew I would be working with a child who had been diagnosed with a reading disability, had labored over reading for years, and had worked hard to learn reading strategies, but often couldn't remember them the next day. When he did read, it was slow and laborious: He "sounded out" each word on the page. Instead of facing failure, Joe needed to find success. A typical day for Joe began with a sustained silent reading activity in which students were allowed to read from an extensive library of books at varying levels: children's magazines, comic books, and language-experience approach books. At the beginning of the year, Joe thought of these silent reading activities as reading time and reluctantly picked books that he thought he should be reading. After I explained that this was a time to read anything he wanted, Joe happily participated in choosing magazines, comic books, and library books. He became very interested in a series of books about the history of the Spiderman and Superman comic books that he explored with another boy in the class. During reading lessons, Joe was allowed to choose the books he wanted to read. At first he chose very easy books to read that were at his independent reading level. Gradually, I encouraged him to read more challenging books and introduced various reader-response activities. In addition, I incorporated a variety of other reading activities throughout the day. Each afternoon, I read a book aloud for the class, which provided an opportunity to initiate literature discussions and to model a variety of other strategies the students could use while reading independently. We wrote several language-experience approach books together in which the students dictated the text based on class activities. We also created a class memory book from daily guided writing activities. In August, Joe flatly stated: "I hate to read." By the end of the year, he was happily and willingly choosing short chapter books to read. Although Joe will always have to cope with a reading disability, he began the transformation from being a reluctant reader to a young boy who is enthusiastic about reading. In contrast, Charlie began to see himself as a successful reader using very different strategies. There was almost no educational history available for Charlie, but it quickly became apparent that he had not met with success in his previous public schools. When Charlie entered my third-grade class halfway through the school year, he was only able to name the letters of the alphabet and write his name. In addition, it was obvious that Charlie would need to make the transition from print to braille in order to be a proficient and efficient reader in the future. …