Learning Disabilities & Reading Disabilities

For children with reading disabilities to succeed, they need three constants:

1.    Interesting reading materials they can quickly understand.

2.    Lessons that challenge rather than frustrate them. Moderate challenge spurs motivation; frequent frustration destroys it. For example, during reading instruction, they should quickly recognize more than 90% of the words in their reading materials; when working alone, they should quickly recognize more than 95% of words.

3.    Visible, frequent indicators of important progress. Together with interesting, comfortable materials and moderate challenge, visible indicators—like charts of progress and word walls that post newly mastered words—make struggling readers want to read and, in many cases, work harder.

To make these constants into a daily reality, teachers need to frequently monitor the struggling reader’s progress and adjust instruction to overcome difficulties and foster success. By monitoring the daily progress of the struggling reader—which is easy to do—teachers can quickly spot problems, identify barriers to progress, and adjust their lessons to foster progress. If their adjustments are not successful, they can quickly ask for help so that the struggling reader does not get frustrated, does not become discouraged, and does not stay in a program that’s failing him.

The research about frequently monitoring programs is clear: If done right, it accelerates progress. In his review of the research on monitoring, here’s what Edward Shapiro, Professor of School Psychology at Lehigh University, reported:

Children whose teachers used repeated measurement made significantly better academic progress…. on the passage reading tests…. on decoding and comprehension.

This supports the strong conclusion of William Rupley and Timothy Blair, two nationally-respected authorities on reading disabilities:

The effective teacher of reading continually diagnoses [monitors] each student every day, either formally or informally. Without this step … inadequate instruction will always follow…. Directly related to continuous diagnosis is the teacher’s ability to keep accurate records…. Continuous diagnosis holds no meaning without it.

So, our advice to you: Make sure your child’s reading progress is monitored frequently and carefully. If it shows he’s having difficulty, make sure his program is quickly adjusted to eliminate the difficulty and reestablish learning.

For more information about monitoring, download a copy of Monitoring Your Child’s IEP: A Focus on Reading from www.reading2008.com. Your child need not be in special education for this article to help you help your child.

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