Last Updated: 6/1/2026
By: Amy Schlueter
Last time, we explored five foundational shifts that help struggling readers build stronger decoding skills, strengthen memory, and create lasting reading growth. But helping students become successful readers doesn’t stop there.
As students begin gaining confidence and accuracy, a new set of challenges often starts appearing. Fluency stalls. Motivation drops. Comprehension strategies become overcomplicated. And sometimes the very interventions meant to help can quietly start working against us.
In this next set of shifts, we’re digging into five more research-aligned ideas that can help move students beyond the basics and into stronger, more independent reading. Because sometimes the biggest breakthroughs happen when we make small adjustments in how we think about instruction.
Shift #6: Fluency Comes After Accuracy (But There’s a Caveat)
Accuracy comes first. Students need a foundation of accurate decoding before true reading fluency can develop. But here’s the caveat: they do not need to be perfect before we begin supporting prosody and fluency. Waiting until students read every word flawlessly can unintentionally delay growth. You can make a text passage more accessible to your students by using decodable text if they’re not ready for grade level passages.
Research shows that repeated readings can lead to significant gains in fluency, even for students with dyslexia. Through multiple encounters with the same text, reading becomes less effortful and more automatic over time. One explanation for this comes from Hebb’s Law—the idea that neural pathways strengthen when they are activated repeatedly. In simple terms: the brain gets better at the things it practices consistently- even when encountering new text.
If you’d like to dig deeper into the science behind this, check out my earlier post, The Science Behind Why Repeated Reading Works from January 24th.
The challenge for many teachers is knowing how to smoothly bridge the gap between accurate word reading and expressive, fluent reading. That’s exactly why I created my Repeated Reading Fluency Starter Kit—to make the transition simple and practical so you can begin incorporating fluency and prosody practice into your classroom or intervention setting without the guesswork.
Shift #7: Vocabulary and Comprehension Come First (Yes, First)
This is the hill I die on.
A little dramatic? Perhaps. But that’s because reading is not one skill. It’s a complex 8 stranded rope that needs all components working together. When one piece weakens, the whole system frays.
Before we ask students to find the main idea, determine theme, or analyze the author’s purpose we need to ask a much more important question:
Do they actually understand what they just read?
If a student doesn’t know what half the words mean, asking them to find the theme is like asking them to solve a mystery…in a language they don’t speak. And yet—so many curriculums jump straight to skill-based questions. As our culture has shifted toward screens and digital entertainment, reading for pleasure has steadily taken a back seat. The concern isn’t technology itself—it’s what may be getting replaced. Vocabulary instruction alone cannot account for the thousands of words students eventually learn. Much of vocabulary growth happens naturally through reading, where students repeatedly encounter words in context. The less students read, the fewer opportunities they have to absorb rich language, nuanced word meanings, and complex sentence structures that help build strong readers.
So how do we begin to fill in this gap? Questioning, pausing, thinking like a 10-year-old (or whatever age students you teach). Recognize that just because you had a great vocab as a kid, your students might not and not every vocab word is in bold-face type. Throw in quick questions to check for understanding and keep your phone handy. Why? A picture is worth a thousand words for things like fringe, trench, clambake, or snapdragon. Then practice those words they missed throughout the week- in conversation, flashcards, slides, games, etc.
Do they know the who, what, when, where, and why?
This is huge. Many kids are focusing so hard on accurate decoding that the gist of the story goes right over their heads. Pause OFTEN to ask WH questions. Before students can identify theme, determine the main idea, or dig into deeper analysis, they need a strong grasp of the basics. Do they know who the text is about? What happened? When and where did it happen? Why did it matter?
If you’re teaching a small group ask: Who can tell me one thing that’s happened so far? Who can tell me another thing that’s happened? This eliminates putting your students “on the spot” and jogs all of their memories. Some plot events stand out for one student more than another, but together, they build collaborative comprehension.
The error that adults make is to jump straight to higher-level comprehension tasks and unintentionally skip the foundation. Don’t assume students understand what is happening in a text just because they can decode the words.
If the basic meaning is shaky, the deeper thinking built on top of it will be shaky too. And sometimes? The best comprehension question is simply: “Tell me what happened.” Groundbreaking, I know.
Shift #8: Keep Lessons Short, Focused, and Predictable
Struggling readers often have weak working memory. They’re already using a big portion of their brain cells to decode words, recall sounds, apply strategies, and make meaning from text. A long, complicated lesson can quickly derail engagement.
Instead:
• Keep instruction tight (5–10 minutes per skill- use a timer and stick to it)
• Follow a consistent routine
• Limit new information
When students know what to expect, they can focus on learning instead of spending their energy trying to figure out what comes next. Predictable routines create safety, reduce cognitive load, and free up working memory for the task that matters most: reading.
At the same time, predictable should not mean repetitive to the point of boredom. Routine is crucial, but students still benefit from novelty and engagement. I like to have specific days of the week (and my students do, too!) where we change up what we’re doing. Fridays are FUN and loaded with phonics games. On Hump Days we read authentic text from engaging sources like magazines, readers’ theater, or a group-chosen novel. Another option is to keep the structure the same but change the delivery. Maybe word reading becomes a football challenge one day, a mystery game the next, or a quick partner activity after that.
Routines remain familiar, but small shifts in presentation keep students interested, motivated, and engaged.
Students thrive when they know the roadmap, but still encounter a few surprises along the way.
Shift #9: Lower Stress, Raise Success
Many struggling readers walk into intervention expecting to fail. They’ve had enough frustrating experiences that they start to assume reading is just something that happens to them instead of something they can actually do successfully. So we change that experience.
- Mix easy/doable with newer/harder concepts
- Celebrate small wins (seriously- like your team just won the Super Bowl)
- Use humor whenever possible- Silly stories? Absolutely. Ridiculous examples? Even better.
And while we’re at it, bring an endless supply of patience and become completely unflappable. You may ask, “What does short e say?” and get a confident “/i/!” back. So you ask again. And then again. And maybe again tomorrow. And Thursday.
But be careful! No eye twitching. No dramatic sighs. No looking at the ceiling searching for strength. Just calm, steady confidence. Because students notice EVERYTHING. They notice the expression that says, We literally practiced this 42 seconds ago. But they also notice when your smile says, No problem, buddy. We’ll get there.
Struggling readers rarely move in a perfectly straight line. Progress often looks more like two steps forward, one step back, a side shuffle, and occasionally wandering into the bushes for a minute. That doesn’t mean learning isn’t happening. The goal isn’t perfection after one lesson. The goal is helping students experience enough success that they begin changing the story they tell themselves about reading.
Shift #10: The Reading Intervention Traps That Quietly Sabotage Growth
One of the hardest truths about reading intervention is this: sometimes students are receiving support every single day and still not making meaningful progress.
Not because teachers don’t care. Or that students are lazy. But because certain intervention traps quietly derail growth without anyone realizing it.
One of the biggest traps is confusing busy work with actual reading practice. If students spend most of their time coloring, cutting, matching, or playing games—and only a few minutes actually decoding, reading, spelling, and retrieving skills from memory—progress will lag.
Struggling readers need high amounts of successful, targeted reading practice.
The activity should support the learning, not replace it.
Another major trap is moving on before skills become automatic. Many struggling readers need far more repetition and review than we expect. A student reading a word correctly once during a heavily supported lesson does not mean the skill is mastered. It simply means the student was successful in that moment. Without cumulative review, retrieval practice, and connected text application, many skills disappear almost as quickly as they were introduced.
This is also why matching students with appropriate text matters so much. If intervention lessons target short vowels but the reading passage is packed with advanced phonics patterns, students often become overwhelmed and fluency falls apart. But the reverse is also true- you have to mix in some authentic text to keep challenging students. I like to have 75% decodable/25% authentic mix to keep it real.
And finally, one of the most damaging traps is assuming one intervention works for all your students. Instructional mismatch is one of the most challenging pitfalls for teachers to overcome. I know we all have our favorite intervention, but you can’t die on that hill if it’s not working. I see many struggling readers who are mentally exhausted from years of confusion and failure. Confidence doesn’t grow from motivational speeches or repeated reminders to “try it one more time.” It serves no one to keep pushing them through to the next step if it’s not working. Confidence grows when students finally experience success because the instruction actually matches their needs. That’s why accurate assessment, explicit teaching, multisensory learning, retrieval practice, and carefully chosen structured literacy interventions matter so much.
When we avoid these hidden traps, intervention becomes far more effective—and students finally begin to believe they can become readers.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, helping struggling readers is not about finding one magical program, one cute activity, or one “hack” from social media that suddenly fixes everything. It’s about becoming intentional, flexible, and relentlessly responsive to what students actually need.
Accurate assessment helps us stop guessing and start teaching with precision. Strong phonics instruction gives students the foundation they desperately need. Pattern-based teaching helps words finally make sense. Multisensory instruction strengthens memory and engagement, especially for students on the super struggle bus. And retrieval practice? That’s the slightly uncomfortable magic that turns short-term exposure into lasting learning.
Most importantly, this work reminds us that struggling readers are not lazy, broken, or “not trying hard enough.” Many of them have simply spent years receiving instruction that didn’t match how their brains learn best. Once we align intervention with their actual needs, growth becomes possible again—and sometimes shockingly fast.
So if you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, or wondering whether all the extra effort is worth it: IT IS. These students remember the teachers who kept showing up, kept adjusting, and kept believing they could learn to read even when the road was messy.
You don’t need a perfect program.
You don’t need fancy materials.
You just need explicit instruction, a structured approach, a focus on meaning and a passion for making a difference. Because at the end of the day, we’re not just teaching kids to read words.
We’re teaching them to understand, think, and engage with what they read, and shaping WHO they become.
And that’s how we make the world a better place- one reader at a time.