STRESSED AND NEED HELP!!!!

First off, here is a great (and free) book on reading from the National Reading Panel: “Put Reading First: The Research Building Block s for Teaching Children to Read.” It is available from the National Institute for Literacy at 1-800-228-8813 or [email protected]/ It can be downloaded from www.nifl.gov. (The pictures are all of small people, but it applies to anyone.) I cannot tell you just how good is this book! You will know what you need to know in order to be a successful teacher of reading.

Why not take a more analytical approach to what your students need. Some may need more comprehension related strategies, other decoding, still others might also need fluency (rate/accuracy) intervention in addition to decoding or comprehension. First, I’ll discuss management, then methods/programs.

First off, what kind of blocks does your school use? What are the disabling categories of students? Do you also see students labels as at-risk and not with IEP’s? We can discuss more program management management after I know these things.

Programs:
Decoding/word recognition for LD and at-risk students
I like Wilson Language for decoding skills with upper middle and high school. It is a synthetic phonics program based on Orton-Gillingham (O-G) methods. I like Lindamood-Bell (LmB) if students are not connected to symbols (I always have one or two, it seems, at any level.) I also like the way LmB handles spelling. In addition to decoding skills instruction, I also like to have students listen to a novel or the basal on tape and participate in discussion in the regular classroom with their peers at least part of the time. (I do not feel the same way about kids who struggle to comprehend. More on that in a moment.) Sometimes students w/decoding issues enjoy being leaders in discussions in the pull-out classroom w/students who struggle to comprehend. You have to play that one by ear based on your population. Main thing: Word recognition skills and keep comprehension comprehension skills moving along. (If you have a cross-cat class, the EMH students can use Wilson, but their pace is slower so that can be troublesome.) I also use a sight word list. It’s not Fry and I cannot remember who wrote it. I’ll look it up if you don’t have one. I spend most sight word time on irregular patterns. Very little time on high-frequency sights.

Fluency— I use Great Leaps in Reading Fluency (www.greatleaps.com) for repeated readings with students whose rate/accuracy is a major problem. I will often use it on most of the decoding kids so that their rate makes progress with word ID skills. (I find out who needs it by giving everyone a reading inventory the first week. The BASIC Reading Inventory has a fluency component built in. Or you can listen to a 100 word paragraph and time it while doing a running record if you have nothing else.) I also do some Reader’s Theater and choral reading of poems and short stories that I’ve pulled for seasonal use, to support classroom basal work, etc.

Comprehension—
Two main areas: Vocabulary and text comprehension.

I do tons of vocabulary work. I like to do a lot of cooperative learning and little bit of individual work here.

Invest in some books that give you prefixes roots and suffixes:

Lundquist, Joegil. (1989). English from the roots up. Medina, WA: Literacy Unlimited.

Vurnakes, Claudia. (1998). Words on the vine: 36 vocabulary units on root words. Grand Rapids, MI: Instructional Fair. (Note: I use very, very few work sheets with students. I avoid them purposefully.)

Stoner, Joan, Cross, T.E., and Anderson, C. W. (1993). Intermediate prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Lincoln, NE: Educational Tutorial Consortium, Inc.

Also in word learning strategies is using the dictionary pronunciation guide.

Other comprehension strategies I teach using direct/explicit instruction:
*Tapping into prior knowledge
*Using graphic and semantic organizers
*Answering questions (purpose for reading, focus attention, think actively, monitoring comprehension, review content/relate to what we know).
*Generating questions
*Recognizing story structure
*Mental Imagery - This is one you may not have learned much about in college. I use “Visualizing and Verbalizing” by Nanci Bell. Many kids w/LD do not “make movies” in their head while reading. This program helps them to do that.
*Summarizing

Want to talk about how to manage a group of students while you teach?

Where do you get the BASIC Reading Inventory ?

http://www.kendallhunt.com/college/rrbasic.html

The phone number is on this website, too.

There are other reading inventories. Do you have one you like?

Thanks for the response! I actually do not teach a reading class at the present time. I was just curious about the reading inventory as I know our Title I teacher is searching for one for the upper elementary grades.

Susan, I just wanted to tell you that I think your advice is wonderful! How blessed your students are to have you!!!

a fellow special educator and mother of a child with APD…

Janis

… wander over to www.resourceroom.net and visit “reading comprehension” for some vocab. and reading ideas. Under “homeschooling” you’ll find some of my favorite materials as well.

Janis,

Thanks for your kind words. I think that we mothers of children with disorders that affect reading have an extra passion for literacy. I’m sure that I will never tire of learning more about teaching reading and writing…and never learn all there is to know.

My mom & dad always told me I had the “gift of gab.” I prefer to say, “liguistically gifted.” :-) At least I can put it to some good in teaching reading.

Have a great week. You’re in N.C., right? What sector?

Susan, yes, I agree about both the passion and never learning it all! We are between Hickory and Gastonia, NC and about an hour NW of Charlotte. I have learned a great deal about reading just in the last year on my own. And what really saddens me is that I feel fairly much alone in my school district. I know of no one else who knows about LB or uses OG based programs. I am actually trying PG first but have access to LiPS and V/V training tapes and am in the process of learning what I can from those. All of this ties in beautifully to what my hearing impaired students need. For too long, the emphasis has been on sight word reading, and that will not work for HI children either unless they have absolutely no access to sound, and that is rarely the case these days. Then there is basically no recognition of APD here. My child goes to a charter school where they are more open to learning new methods and meeting her needs. But those state tests may trip us up…we’ll see. I’m prepared to homeschool later on if I have to, although that would be a daunting task!

You have a good week, too!

Janis

Susan, you have been so good at answering questions I hope you don’t mind answering some more. I found my copy of my sons basic reading inventory given to him last year when he was in 8th grade. His areas of difficulty were words in isolation, vocabulary, and inference. What I don’t get is how could his comprehension be on grade level with these difficulties? The teacher noted he had word substitutions and omissions when reading along, self correction and slow rate of reading. The other thing she noted is he read without inotation. His scores were higher when he read aloud then silent. His listening comprehension was higher then his reading comprehension. Is this a common type profile? I thought kids with APD would have better reading comprehension then listening? Then again the test was given in the library 1 to 1 situation. He was in regular ed in k-6, his problems 1st noted in 1st grade but never was “severe” enough to get services. In 7th grade he qualified LD, at this time he had a 3rd grade reading level. In 8th we hired a private tutor who gave this inventory. At start of tutoring his independant reading level was 3rd grade at end of tutoring it was 6th grade. Although he improved in his 4th months of tutoring (discontinued due to scheduling conflict) he still had the same areas of weakness just not as severe. He is in all regular ed classes this year, 9th grade. I know being in regular ed will help with his difficulties with vocab, but how would you go about working on inotation and inference? For words in isolation I would take it that that is difficulty with sounding out words? If he knows eough of the words that would not interfere with comprehension of a story right? So this would mean he would score a lower grade level on a test of isolated words only? Sorry for so many questions but it can be very confusing.

The other comment I found interesting on the report is that his lower level comprehension was worse then his higher level comprehension. Does this make sense? Could this of resulted from his years of sitting in class lost (proir to LD placement)? How far back in skills would you go with a child like this? Seems like it would be difficult since his profile is so uneven. How do you remediate but keep from getting bored? Now that he is in all regular ed classes he seems more interested in keeping up, but with skill gaps it is difficult. He was bored and got straight A’s in LD classes but struggles in regular ed he seems to be “between sizes” right now. As a parent what should I do to help fill the gap?

This sounds like a very common profile to me! Shay has also noted a lot of similar kids. He is doing a *lot* of guessing and filling in in his reading. On an advanced level passage concerning a topic he is familiar with, he can fill in a lot from other knowledge. This explains the unevenness of the profile; it depends totally on guessability, not actual reading level, content, vocabulary, or any other actual reading skill. The lack of intonation comes from reading word by word with mental stress and difficulty, running through the memory banks and the guess system for each word. So does the slow reading. So does the difficulty with individual words out of context — no guessing clues. So does the better comprehension on hearing than on reading — when reading, so much of his brainpower is used on memory bank review and guessing that there is no time or space left for comprehension. There are two approaches: more of the same of what has been done, which will get more of the same minimal and frustrating results; OR actually teach him to read using effective decoding, and then re-teach reading continuous text and comprehension from the basis of rteading rather than guessing. See Shay’s previous posts, and mine as well, for detailed outlines of how to do this; or email me for the detailed outline.

First, let me make sure I’ve got the facts straight:

Son-8th grade was given reading inventory and scored 3rd grade level (indep) before tutoring and 6th grade level (indep) after 4 months of tutoring. If these are accurate, I’d say you got some real bang-for-your-tutoring-buck. Find that tutor and go another round!

If an 8th grader scores two grade levels behind, strengths are *relative* and should have been stated as such in the report; however, weaknesses might be just plain weaknesses. (I’d probably give more than one test/passage. Average of 3, for example, before reporting.) If one reads at grade level and the report says “relative weakness” it means that the overall score isn’t weak, just this element or skill. Make sense? Not sure I’m explaining that well. Long day. Tired.

There are a number of things that can get in the way of inferencing (which is drawing conclusions). The student might not be focused on details, might have poor memory, might not be interested in the topic of the reading, might have poor fluid reasoning, or might not have appropriate back ground information on the topic. There are more, these are just off-the-top-of-my head.

Words in isolation is decoding/word recognition. One must recognize those few hundred words that don’t follow pronunciation expectations. The rest can be decoded, but must attacked quickly else rate suffers. Slow reading rate indicates this as a potential problem. Slow processing speed could be another reason for slow fluency rate, however, so no absolutes. Visual problems are another reason for poor fluency. Word substitutions/omissions are common for kids with fluency issues. (I’m working with a girl currently whose eyes track faster than her speech motor center can accommodate. She’s always skipping words because her eyes move at a faster rate. There is no test for this that I can give…I observe carefully and dialog with the student. Awareness is half the battle.)

I assume the tester said that he *does* self-correct. If so, that’s a good thing. It means that the student is making meaning, thinking about what they are reading, while they are reading words. They aren’t just “calling” out words without thought for the meanings.

Reading without intonation is another fluency issue. I like choral reading for this problem. Great Leaps helps, too, as long as the implementor doesn’t pass the student until they have completed the passage with feeling. Many students need lots of modeling. For students with a really “flat affect,” I may not require Maya Angelou-level read-alouds every time, especially if the student isn’t wild about the particular selection. I let them pick out one to “work up.”

If the listening comprehension isn’t higher than the reading comprehension, one cannot expect much gain—so says the lit and so has been my experience with hundreds of children. The higher the discrepancy the higher the potential gains, unless we’re dealing with a severe speech issue.

He may make better meaning when reading aloud. There are many different kinds of APD. His type may not affect listening in the right environment for him.

Working on inference involves many, many things: story elements (well grounded in character details, plot information, setting elements, etc.), background knowledge of story topic, interest in story topic, ability to reason analytically to use inductive or deductive reasoning skills. Clear and firm purpose for reading (Does one *realize* that one will be asked to figure out in what room the crime was committed, by which character, and with which instrument.) There are probably more but that gets you started.

You wrote:
> For words in isolation I would take it that that is
> difficulty with sounding out words? If he knows eough of the
> words that would not interfere with comprehension of a story
> right? So this would mean he would score a lower grade level
> on a test of isolated words only? Sorry for so many
> questions but it can be very confusing.

Basically, yes, it is sounding out words. Some kids, especially those with good reasoning skills and who think about reading while they are reading (metacognition), get by better on the “guess & go” method of reading. It catches up to them in multi-syllable words, though, though and they stall out at 3rd/4th grade. Weak vocabulary can have a negative affect on this, too.

I have student listen to book-on-tape at their listening level to keep vocabulary moving. Because it doesn’t take so much time to read the novel or basal selection with book/tape, the student can still discuss with their class and I have time to work on decoding skills in homogenous groups of 2-4 at least 2X weekly and usually 3X. I like daily and 1:1, but don’t get to do that except for K-2 level readers in Gr 6+.

I hope I’ve answered your questions without totally boring you.

Hi Susan Me Again :-). Saw your above post re: books on tape. When you say books on tape are you talking textbooks, reading books or both. I am considering this for my daughter who, as we’ve discussed, reads at grade level but slowly (with great inference, intonation and comprehension). I am considering a membership to RFBD - do you know anything about this and/or how I go about getting the books on tape?

Thanks for all your hard work and advice for us moms.

Yup you saw the numbers right from 3rd to 6th in 4 months. The tutor we had was very good. My son respected her alot and he worked really hard. I think what helped the most though is she chose the right enviroment for him. She conducted her sessions 1 on 1 in the library in a room they have set aside for this purpose, there was no outside sound to interfere with the teaching. We are hoping to start the tutoring up again but fitting it in the tutors schedule (an actual reading teacher at one of the schools) and my sons schedule is difficult. My son does very well in 1 to 1 situations because there is less competing sounds. In his form of CAPD it is very difficult for him to decide which is the sound he should be attending to. I have seen lots posted about a slow processing speed interfering with reading but according to my sons WISC scores his processing index is 104. I will employ the techniques seen on the other threads (very thorough, thanks all) and have printed them out for his resource teacher. I very much appreciatte all the answers you all have given me. Parts of it I was pretty sure of but you hear such conflicting information sometimes it is hard to keep straight. My sons tutor feels he has made such progress due to his “high intelligence” but his IQ is 95 with 100 being the average. I know 95 is in the average range but always hear the kids who do best in remediation have a higher chance of remediation. Just have been very curious about the posts on the various boards lately. Thanks so much again.

Thanks! Hope you have an outstanding school year!

I support students with both novels and texts if needed.

You can get most novels on tape via the public library system. If they don’t have them, order through World Cat (world-wide public library) and have delivered to your library.

Text books can be rented through Talking Tapes in St. Louis, MO.
www.talkingtapes.org I think

See ya :-)

Lots of kids have pockets of marvelous intelligence and only look average on IQ tests. This measurement system is all we have, but it is really faulty. Don’t judge potential by it. Really, don’t judge anything by it except qualification for services and maybe some suspected areas for needed work. Even that requires other measurement.

Although having worked in a university medical center eval. clinic, I can tell you that MUCH of the time we were retesting kids and finding the same range of scores as the schools had, but we were taking the time(and had the expertise) to explain what the scores meant; expecially in the cases of kids with mild mental retardation and those who scored in the “slow learner” category. It didn’t help our job that schools classified all of these students as LD, and parents were extremely disappointed when achievement was very slow. Yes, of course IQ is not the whole picture but parents need to understand what the testing means.

I read with great interest your previous post. There was lots of good info in there, so thanks!

Specifically, I’m curious about your Great Leaps comment that the student shouldn’t be passed until they read the passage with feeling. I’m finding with my son that the only way for him to complete the passages within the 1 minute time frame is speak really quickly. So quickly that its hard for him to get the words out (he’s got a little bit of an oral motor issue). But he gets through it and is excited to “leap” to the next page. However, if he reads untimed, he usually has appropriate intonation etc. We are doing Great Leaps to improve his fluency, which it has. (He is a dreadfully slow decoder, but has good comprehension) So I’m curious if you would recommend that I modify what we;ve been doing.

Ken would be the best person to say; however, my experience with students who have speech motor issues is to not worry so much about intonation on the Great Leaps portion, all the time. I do though, often go back to a much practiced passage that they liked and ask them to read with “drama” (I call it). I time them without their knowing it—informally, like watch a second hand—to see how long it takes. They often finish in the allotted time because the stress of being timed is taken away. (Then, of course, I tell them…try to train them not to worry so much about the timings…when they’re ready, they’ll pass.)

I try to set students up to find *joy* in re-reading passages. As a reader, I find great joy in rereading my most enjoyable things. If a student likes a story, we work on it to show-quality. Sometimes I even have them go read it for the principal! They love that. At home, they could select something—not necessarily G.Leaps—and read for family or visiting friends.

and is what I’ve been doing. I knew he needed to “beat the clock” to feel satisfaction, and then we re-read stories for fun. He loves literature when its read to him, but isn’t able to really read for his own pleasure yet. That’s my goal for this year (3rd grade) : )

Hi Karen, My son also reads very slowly but has good comprehension like your son. (My son is 12 years old and is in the 7th grade.) I am looking into Great Leaps to help improve fluency. But my son has underlying problems with rapid naming which I think makes reading harder for him. Does your son have rapid naming issues?

My question is… Has Great Leaps found to help improve fluency if there is an underlying rapid naming issue. Maybe Ken, you could help me with this, too.

Thanks for your help.

Donna in MO

I’m not sure. None of our tests were for RAN, but others who have looked at my son’s profile have suggested he might have this problem. For sure something is messing up his reading - he just doesn’t read slowly, he reads well below grade level. He seems to decode OK, has good phonemic awareness. Great leaps has not produced miracles, but his tutor did remark that she saw an improvement in his fluency. I hadn’t told her about great leaps, b/c I wanted to see if she’d notice anything …