A guided reading program for pupils with specific reading difficulties

A contemporary and functionally literate reader has to excel in flexible reading of diverse material which he encounters on daily basis. This demands that an individual knows and uses different reading strategies which help him achieve the reading goal. This is why the development of reading capabilities or skills is one of the main goals of elementary education. Slovene and foreign authors claim in their research that there are a lot of pupils in elementary school that have problems with the literacy process. These students have general and specific learning problems. Specific problems in the field of reading and writing are the most explored specific learning disorders. They obstruct the learning of elementary school reading, writing and calculating skills because they affect the ability of processing, interpreting and connecting the perceived information. Therefore, the automatization of previously mentioned skills is worsened. Specific learning problems, where reading and writing problems are typical, have a key influence on a person's learning successfulness. In Slovenia we use a five-level model of help and support to treat students who either have learning problems or have problems with reading and writing. This model on the continuum ensures different intensive forms of help. For the successful learning of reading with students who have specific reading problems it is key to focus a special attention to developing the fluency of reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension using different reading strategies. \nGuided reading, which is for more than two decades a known, recognized and proven effective approach to teach reading around the world, represents a consistent, structured, individually customized and explicit teaching of reading strategies. It takes place in smaller groups of students with approximately the same reading capabilities. The adopted strategies help the students with successful independent learning. A teacher’s encouragement is key for a successful learning of effective reading strategies. Therefore, guided reading represents one of the possible forms of group help. This could be done on the third level of the five-level model of help and support for students with reading difficulties. \nIn the empirical part we focused on the design and adjustment to the programme of guided reading for the students with specific reading problems. With the performance of the programme we checked its effectiveness to improve students’ reading skills. There were six fourth-grade students involved in the research. They were divided into an experimental (EG) and controlled (CG) group. The EG students had the guided reading programme and the CG students did not. The guided reading programme lasted for three months, from the beginning of October till the end of December 2019. There were 20 meetings and each meeting lasted for 45 minutes. We checked the effectiveness of the programme with the comparison of results, which we received with subtests from ACADIA, SNAP, the reading and writing disruption test, the reading fluency test and the reading comprehension test. \nThe comparison of the results from the start and the end testing showed that the EG students showed more progress in almost all reading skills than the CG students. After the guided reading programme, they achieved better results in phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary and reading fluency. The EG students showed the most progress at speed, accuracy and reading expressiveness. With the analysis of the results we confirmed the effectiveness of the guided reading programme which shows the need to execute such programmes. \n