Struggling Learners

Teachers in today’s classrooms face the challenge of educating students with diverse learning needs in the general education classroom. They are searching for effective instructional strategies. Many of their students are English Language learners and students with disabilities. In addition, there are many struggling learners who, without intervention and understanding of their learning needs, will be referred to special education for reading, writing and math interventions.

In order to help classroom teachers conquer this challenge, we need to understand:

• Comprehension vs. strategic fluency,
• Writing skills vs. strategic fluency
• Math problem solving skills vs. strategic fluency

Strategic Fluency vs. Comprehension

Teachers have well developed materials from text companies for use in Readers and Writers Workshop. These materials for helping students construct meaning are powerful. However, they provide structures for building comprehension, not strategic fluency. Few programs provide teachers with the tools needed to help their students develop the metacognitive strategies critical for strategic fluency. Therefore students develop comprehension skills but do not always become independent readers.

Strategic Fluency across the Curriculum

All learners need to develop fluency with writing strategies and learning strategies critical to success particularly in a high stakes testing environment. Students have learned writing and math skills but have not developed the strategic fluency critical to generalization. LINKS Metaconitive Reading Writing and Math Strategies are integrated and infused into daily instruction. Students learn what strategy to use and when to use it.