Simple Reading Skills

Monday was probably the most interaction I have had with the students the entire time. I got to help this  very sweet girl read an article about a new way to clean water. She was supposed to read the article and find information she thought was important and copy the facts down. She began to read the article and I noticed she was having trouble. She frequently would mix up words. She was having trouble with the word "treatment", and every time she came across a word that looked like the word "treatment" she would just say "treatment" even though it was not the word. I had to constantly help her sound out words that I thought were very simple words. I was really shocked by how much trouble she was having. She was having trouble understanding when to use the past tense of words as well. She was constantly asking what each big word meant. 

I was surprised by her troubles with phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax. Over the summer I took classes for speech-language pathology, and I was taught all the different ages that children learn all the parts of language. Most kids whose first language is English, learn all these rules before the age of 10. This girl was a 15 year old sophomore in high school. It amazed me how well she was doing in her classes, even thought she couldn't understand the simple rules of language. This encounter with this student taught me that I couldn't just assume that all these kids were on the same level as the kids whose first language is English. I knew that they were not going to be as well educated on the English language, but I guess I just assumed that they knew the simplest parts of language. Now I know that I can't do that. I have to realize that they are all on different reading levels and all need different kinds of help.