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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Many struggling readers hate homework. Listening to them often tells you why: “It’s too hard…. I can’t do it…. I’m too dumb…. No matter how hard I try, I fail…. It frustrates me…. I can’t do so much homework. ”
To avoid fighting with your child about homework, to avoid assaults on his motivation and self-confidence, and to make homework a tolerable or, even better, a positive experience, you need to meet with your child’s teachers to develop a plan for improving his reading. It’s critical that the plan consider homework. By not adhering to sensible homework practices that support your child’s progress in reading, teachers may well devastate his chances of becoming a proficient reader. Read more...
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Heidi Anne Mesmer and Staci Cumming of Oklahoma State University have offered essential advice on improving the reading abilities of struggling readers. Unfortunately, schools often ignore their advice. Doing so imperils the future of struggling readers. First their warning; then their advice:
Their Warning:
“Many struggling readers are being asked to read books that are simply too hard …. For struggling readers the consequences of text-reader mismatches are disastrous and far-reaching. Often these students fall further and further behind…. Making sure that struggling readers have books that they can read is an absolute imperative.” Read more...
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Recently, I reviewed the Gray Diagnostic Reading Battery-Second Edition for The Seventeenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. In the Gray’s manual was a wonderful quote that’s so important, it’s worth memorizing: “Too often examiners forget the dictum that ‘tests don’t diagnose, people do’ and base their diagnoses exclusively on test results, a hazardous enterprise at best. Test results are merely observations, not diagnoses. They specify a performance level at a given time under a particular situation, but they do not tell the examiner why a person performs as he or she did.” Read more...
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