From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
If your child has a reading disability, the school should monitor his progress frequently enough to prevent minor problems from becoming major ones, to prevent him from getting frustrated with work that’s too difficult, to prevent him from becoming bored with work he’s already mastered, to accelerate instruction when the data shows he can handle it comfortably.
In 2006, the federally-funded National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD; Johnson et al.) recommended that schools assess the progress of students who need “extensive and intensive interventions” twice weekly (p. 2.4). Children with reading disabilities are part of this group. Read more...
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Parents and teachers who want to study a well-organized, well-written, well-researched book on reading disabilities should take a serious look at Thomas G. Gunning’s Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing Difficulties. Every chapter of Dr. Gunning’s book deals with an important topic that can drastically affect the success—and the failure—of children with reading disabilities. Although the book is written primarily for graduate students in reading or reading disabilities programs and for teachers, it offers great value to parents who need to advocate for their child with reading disabilities. By understanding its contents (as well as that in our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds), parents can more fully understand what a reading evaluation should look like, what good instruction involves, what their child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) should include. Read more...
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On another blog, someone commented that adults should allow children to read whatever they want. Here was my response:
I agree that it’s usually best to let children read what interests them. But I would add a caveat: Adults must discuss with children the pros, the cons, and the values inherent in what they read. Gradually, as children, including struggling readers, develop positive emotions about reading, adults can introduce new topics. These topics should differ slightly from what the children typically read. Slight differences are usually attractive; major differences are not. Thus, if a child likes reading about dogs and has read several books about them, introduce him to a book about wolfs, and later, perhaps one about coyotes. Read more...
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After reading our posts on monitoring the progress of children with reading disabilities, several parents and teachers requested more information. If you want more information, we suggest you read Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds, chapters 7 (Monitoring Progress) and 9 (The IEP). We also suggest that you join our mailing list. By joining, you will get a free pdf article, Monitoring Your Child’s IEP: A Focus on Reading (co-authored by Sheila Alber-Morgan, Associate Professor, Ohio State University). We hope these suggestions help.
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The post below was originally published two months ago. I’m republishing it because its topic—monitoring children’s progress—is critically important. The topic is so important that I’ve encouraged university scholars to provide more comprehensive information on one of its recommendations, curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Thus, the Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties (RWQ) will publish a thematic issue on advances in CBM. The issue, edited by Erica Lembke of the University of Missouri, will address many CBM topics, including its use in tutoring, newly created CBM measures for students with cognitive disabilities, and the school-wide use of CBM. Read more...
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After my last post on diagnostic teaching, several parents asked me if other experts in reading disabilities think that reading evaluations should include diagnostic teaching. The answer: Yes.
Below are quotations from well-regarded graduate school textbooks. If the reading specialist will not make diagnostic teaching part of her evaluation, you may want to share these with her:
“Trying to predict which interventions will work well for individual students has not been a fruitful endeavor. Therefore, we must test curricular modifications empirically” (Witt et al., 1997, p. 51). This is exactly what diagnostic teaching does—test curricular modifications and different methods to increase the likelihood that instructional recommendations will work for the child. Read more...
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Perhaps the most important question a reading diagnosis should answer is this: “What instructional strategies will likely prove effective with this child?”
Published tests can’t answer this. Only diagnostic teaching can.
The Importance of Diagnostic Teaching
As Michael Kibby (Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo and director of its Reading Clinic for 36 years) asserts:
Only from diagnostic teaching is it possible to provide to others who might teach this child reading a valid and full description of the milieu that seems most appropriate for the child’s instruction and the methods, materials, and instructional conditions that facilitate learning. Any attempt to describe how a child can learn important reading abilities that does not include diagnostic teaching is simply armchair thinking and of limited validity. (2009, p. 253) Read more...
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As Wendell Berry said, “Once precision is abandoned as a linguistic or literary virtue, vague generalization is one of the two remaining possibilities, gibberish being the second.” Such language is open to guessing, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. Look at these examples from a composite of IEPs.
Present Levels. “Juan has trouble with reading. He needs to improve his comprehension.” Ask yourself: How far below grade level is he reading? In addition to comprehension problems, does he have trouble with sight vocabulary, decoding, and fluency? Does he have trouble with listening vocabulary and listening comprehension? Without this information, teachers (and parents) don’t know what to teach him, how to measure his progress, and, because his instructional levels are not listed, at what levels to start instruction.
Read more...
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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. Read more...
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Can you count on test results? No.
Although the results may accurately reflect your child’s current abilities, you can’t be absolutely sure. No test, even the kind matched to your question (see previous postings), is perfect. Every score inevitably contains error. Moreover, even a test designed to answer your question might be a poor test.
How then should you deal with this uncertainty? I suggest three things. Read more...
- Read the Mental Measurements Yearbook to assess the strengths and weaknesses of whatever standardized tests your child takes. Often, its in-depth test reviews are highly informative. Most large libraries carry the Yearbooks.
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