Welcome teachers, students and parents! I hope that these web pages are helpful to you. I along with a Huron High School student, Chad Koch, created and designed these pages in hopes that educators, parents and students could share common knowledge and vocabulary about literacy, specifically reading strategies.

First, let me start by introducing myself. My name is Carrie Melnychenko. I have taught in the Huron district since 1994. I have also taught both writing and literature at Eastern Michigan University. I earned my Master’s Degree in written communication at Eastern and I am currently part of a teacher research group affiliated with Eastern as well.

My philosophy of reading has changed a little over the past years. Let me explain. Since I was very young, I have loved to read. I read frequently and never seemed to have any problems comprehending what I was reading or staying focused. In short, I was blessed. The first time I encountered a problem with understanding text was during graduate school. The professor assigned a rigorous reading assignment (well what was rigorous for me anyway). I remember sitting at home with the book in my lap and crying. I could not comprehend what the author was trying to say. And worse, I didn’t know what to do about it! No one had ever taught me strategies that could help with reading comprehension.  

I realized then that this must be how many students feel every day. I recently asked my 10 th and 11 th grade students (general as well as accelerated) if they ever encountered such reading difficulties and what they did in response. Almost every student admitted to being challenged by texts and sometimes failing to understand the reading. When I asked “What do you do when you are stuck?” they responded:

“I just skip that part and go on and hope that it will be explained better later.” “I ask a friend who is smart what they think.” “I wait until class when the teacher gives us notes over the chapter.” “I go back and reread it slower.”                                                 “If it’s just one word – then I try to use the other words around it to figure out what it means.” “I don’t know.   It happens all the time.   I get to the end of a long page and I read the words but I just don’t know what I read.”

Problems with reading don’t just occur with early readers. I used to think that in high school, students should know how to read well. They should come to me with those skills and then I could help them get to a higher level of reading. But the truth is, without strategies to use, many of us would be lost as readers. Whether reading comes naturally or has to be worked at, I owe it to my students to make sure that I have given them a few tricks of the trade that can help them make sense of what they read.