From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
“In this era of increased testing and expanding high stakes accountability systems, we need to remember the purpose for assessment. We want our schools to improve, and for this to happen, we have to do better at helping kids learn. Some of the tests teachers administer cannot help them much in this effort. Standardized measures (like those administered by states) and the outcome measures required under the No Child Left Behind law fall into this category. They are designed more to measure student achievement levels than to guide classroom instruction” (Santi, York, Foorman, & Francis, 2010, p. 1). Read more...
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From Reading and Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis
Parents of struggling writers worry about their children’s struggle. They want to know, “How can I help my child?”
If your child struggles with writing, this post might help you and your child’s school identify the type of writing instruction your child needs. It will do this by first discussing critical but often ignored areas of diagnosis, then discussing a typical but inadequate diagnostic process that can do more harm than good, and finally suggesting actions you can take. A follow-up post will outline one effective, well-researched method for helping struggling writers improve their writing: Self-Regulated Strategy Development. Read more...
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From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities, A Blog by
Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis
Parents and school personnel often make a critical mistake. They assume that instruction and related factors do little or nothing to cause or sustain reading disabilities, that all reading problems lie within the struggling reader. Thus, reading and other educational evaluations that reflect this assumption stress five things: testing, testing, testing, testing, and testing. They minimize or ignore everything else. Read more...
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Guest Column by Patrick McCabe, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, St. John’s University
Lucinda (not real name) is a fourth grader who does well in class. She likes to attend school, does her homework, and pays attention. But there is one thing that she does not like about school: standardized tests! Read more...
Dyslexia, Learning Disabilities, reading evaluation, reading tests, test, testing, tests
A critical component of beginning reading and word recognition is your child’s ability to isolate, identify, and manipulate or apply sounds that he hears within words. When kindergartners and first graders listen for, identify, and manipulate large or small units of sounds within words, like the sounds of syllables or individual letters, it’s called phonological awareness. When they do this with only the smallest meaningful sounds, sounds that distinguish between words, like the /b/ sound in bat and the /c/ sound in cat, it’s called phonemic awareness. Read more...
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Shortly after meeting me, parents often ask, “What program and services does my child need to overcome his reading disabilities?” They’re surprised when I say, “I don’t know enough about your child and his problems. Tell me more. Exactly what problems does he have? With what components of reading does he struggle? What can’t he do?” My response often surprises and disappoints them. Here’s my explanation.
A Reading Evaluation Needs to Pinpoint the Problem: The Five Areas of Reading
To be effective, programs that aim to improve the reading of children with reading disabilities need to focus on the child’s specific difficulties. Identifying those difficulties requires an evaluation from a reading specialist. 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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What you want from and ask an evaluator depends on her specific discipline. It addition to reading and special education evaluations, children with reading disabilities may need evaluations from applied behavior analysis specialists, clinical psychologists, neurologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, psychiatrists, school psychologists, social workers, and speech and language therapists. The list can be long, seemingly too long. It might also include allergists, art therapists, music therapists, and nutritionists. Of course, your child should be evaluated only in areas that might be causing him academic, social, emotional, or health problems. By itself, too many evaluations can create problems. Read more...
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A recent blog posting said that writing difficulties may be more common than reading difficulties (http://tln.typepad.com/middleweb/2009/05/writtenlanguage-disorder.html#comments). I agree. Here is my response. Read more...
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