No. Think of how you’d feel if day in and day out you were frustrated. How do you act when stress is relentless, when you always feel overwhelmed, when all you expect is failure? How will this affect your mood, your optimism, your willingness to try? Chances are you’d get angry, get depressed, try to escape. Children are the same.
Morally, schools should help children, not harm them. But requiring children with reading disabilities to read lots of materials they can’t read, they can’t understand, they can’t escape from, and demanding that they succeed with these materials, harms them. It stigmatizes them. It tells them they’re failures. It creates emotional and motivational problems. It impedes progress. It creates animosity. Here’s what Lauren Leslie and Joanne Caldwell, two renowned literacy scholars, warned about frustration level materials: Avoid them. Read more...
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From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
Struggling readers are often unmotivated to read. In many cases, the cause is simple to identify: The materials they’re required to read are too difficult. This defines frustration.
One way to reverse this situation and motivate struggling readers is to have adults read to them. The materials should be interesting and moderately challenging to struggling readers. The materials should engage them and make them think. Follow this up with easy, interesting materials for them to read on the same or similar topics. Read more...
Dyslexia, dyslexic, dyslexics, easy reading, frustration level, Learning Disabilities, learning disability, moderate challenge, Motivation, Reading Disabilities, reading disability, reading levels, Reading Materials, reading problem, reading problems, reading remediation, reading skills, remedial reading, remediation, struggling reader, Struggling Readers, text-reader matching
