Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

What’s wrong with him? In most cases, nothing. Lots of struggling readers resist reading. After years of failure, they expect to fail; they’ve given up, they’re protecting themselves from more failure and embarrassment. From their perspective, resistance is rational. Here’s Dr. Sebastian Wren’s explanation:

Put simply, students in 3rd grade who are still struggling with reading start to see themselves as stupid. They see their peers reading so effortlessly and fluently, and they begin to think that their peers are good readers because their peers are smarter than they are. But they don’t want other people to think of them as stupid, so they try to hide the fact that they can not read as well as their peers. This leads to avoidance behaviors—they avoid reading—some of them avoid it at any cost, going to extremes to avoid letting people know that they really can’t read well. Some students would rather be punished and sent out of the room than have to embarrass themselves trying to read. They act out, they argue, they sulk—when they take tests, they deliberately and blatantly miss all of the questions because they would rather be seen as a problem child who just is not trying than a stupid child who just can’t read.

Teaching a 3rd grader to read is just like teaching a 1st grader to read, but with one very important difference—the 3rd grader is not as motivated. In fact, a lot of struggling readers in 3rd and 4th grade will fight you every step of the way. By 5th or 6th grade, the situation is very grave because the student is so far behind her peers, she doesn’t believe she will ever catch up.

If your child resists reading, what can you do? You can meet with your child’s teachers to discuss these suggestions:

Suggestion 1: When teachers are teaching your child to read, they should use materials at his proper instructional reading level. At the instructional level, teachers work directly with your child; before instruction, he easily recognizes 95% or more of the words he encounters and understands 70% or more of what he reads. If he’s very anxious, he may need even easier materials.

Suggestion 2: Whenever your child reads materials independently, his teachers should make sure the materials are at his proper independent reading level. Without help, he should easily recognize 99% of the words he encounters and understand 90% or more of what he reads; homework should be at this level.

Suggestion 3: Your child’s teachers should not ask him to read frustration level materials. Asking struggling readers to read such materials can cause emotional distress and block learning; at this level, children stumble with words, recognize fewer than 90% of them, and understand less than 70% of what they read. Identifying these three levels—instructional, independent-frustration—may require a reading specialist to conduct a comprehensive reading evaluation.

Suggestion 4: Each day your child should listen to someone read interesting materials that he can adequately understand, followed by lively, interesting discussions about the materials. Lively, interesting discussions are not quizzes about what he remembers and understands.

Suggestion 5: Each day your child should read and discuss lots of easy, interesting materials that don’t embarrass him. Both the ease of the materials and the topics make reading interesting, encouraging children to read more, which increases their skill. Lots of easy, interesting reading gives them practice with word recognition, increasing their decoding skills, sight vocabulary, and fluency. Easy, interesting reading can also help them extend old concepts and develop new ones, while increasing their vocabularies.

Suggestion 6: If your child resists reading, if he will not read without strong rewards, reward (reinforce) him for reading easy, interesting materials. Reward him immediately after he reads, what is for him, a reasonable but not excessive amount of material. The effort he makes should be reasonable and comfortable for him, not excessive or straining. Base rewards on effort, not skill.

Use rewards he values so much that he’s willing to read to get them, change rewards before they bore him, and, if possible, reward him at home for the reading he does in school. You might, for example, arrange for his teachers to send you a daily note telling you how much he read in school; this helps you determine how much to reward him.

To sustain his motivation when the rewards end, start his motivation program by rewarding him with frequent, age-appropriate tangible rewards that he values, such as Pokémon cards, or activity rewards, such as playing basketball or video games for 10 minutes; then, as his performance improves, as he begins to enjoy what he’s reading, and as he feels successful, gradually and inconspicuously reduce the frequency and amount of such rewards.

When initially rewarding him, pair the rewards with positive comments that emphasize his effort: “Ryan, you read silently for 15 minutes straight. You did what I asked: you stayed on task. And from our conversation, it sounds like you enjoyed the story. Good job.” Continue making frequent, positive comments as you reduce and finally end the tangible and activity rewards. Then gradually reduce, but don’t eliminate, positive comments.

As we’ve noted, these suggestions require you to meet with your child’s teachers—perhaps twice monthly—to develop a plan of action. In addition, if your child is eligible for special education, make sure that his Individualized Education Program (IEP) explicitly lists his instructional and independent levels and any suggestions that might strengthen his motivation to read. If his IEP does not include agreed-upon suggestions, teachers may never implement them, not because the teachers are uncaring, but because they’re human: they forget.

Although not a panacea for preventing or remediating reading disabilities, motivation is as crucial to success in overcoming reading disabilities as air is to breathing. Without strong motivation to read, children with reading disabilities will read little and practice little, making meaningful progress impossible. That’s one reason the school has a responsibility to rectify motivation problems.

More information on motivating reluctant readers can be found in my two articles listed at the end of this post and in chapter 4 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. You can download the articles for free under Resources at www.reading2008.com.

In a future post we’ll discuss Dr. Patrick McCabe’s (St. John’s University) research-based strategies for using verbal feedback to strengthen the confidence and motivation of children with reading disabilities. His strategies are simple but powerful.

References and Resources

Margolis, H. (2005). Increasing struggling learners’ motivation: What tutors can do and say. Mentoring and Tutoring, 13(2), 223-240 (www.reading2008.com).

Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G. G. (2009). Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com).

Margolis, H., & McCabe, P. P. (2003). Self-efficacy: A key to improving the motivation of struggling learners. The Clearing House (2004, July/August), 77(6), 241-249 (www.reading2008.com).

Wren, S. (2006). Motivation and learning to read. Retrieved 4/1406 from http://www.balancedreading.com/motivation.html.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond    www.reading2008.com