Struggling to Read

Like Jessica Staff mentioned in her second post, I noticed a couple of children at Lighthouse Elementary struggling to read very simple words. We were working with them in completing different exercises in their text books when a few of them couldn't get the word. This wasn't just a one time thing... it was on almost every page. The third graders could read words like "the" and "or" with ease, but other terms provided a lot of difficulty of them. I was thinking to myself, how are these children completing their assigments if they can't even read the directions? If I remember correctly, my third grade class was reading books. I've seen them complete other tasks, with harder concepts, but they can't even read simple language. It was just shocking for me to see them struggle with words that a third grader should definately be capable of reading.