A One-Week Group-Centered Motivational Intervention Program

Learning to read occurs during such a sensitive period of childhood development that reading can then go on to affect us across our entire life span. If children learn to read in first grade, then reading becomes a very positive part of their life. If children are labeled as failures, at-risk of failing, or as slow readers, then reading can become the catalyst that leads to many school-based mental health problems (Oldfather, 2002).

Visit a nursing home; ask the residents if they remember their reading group in first or second grade. Eighty- and ninety-year-old seniors can still quickly tell you whether they were slow readers or one of the smart readers in their first grade class. Learning to read is so closely attached to our self-concept that it becomes a part of our identity (Deci et al., 1991). Therefore, the problem of reading failure must be solved. This is more than just a problem for the classroom teacher. Children’s reading failure permeates all of their life, and thus it must be a primary concern of school counselors, psychologists, and, indeed, all mental health practitioners.