I’m finishing my Master’s now at the Philippine Normal University (Early Childhood Education), and one of my subjects were on Reading Remediation. A lot of children have reading difficulties, and teachers/parents
need to know how to correctly teach their children how to read... and enjoy doing it!
Anyway, here is a report a classmate and I made for the class. I am no expert in this, so I don’t think I can answer questions about it. Suggestions, though, are most welcome in the comments area.
Taken from books:
• Diagnosis and Remediation of Reading Disability by Emerald Dechant
• Helping The Wordblind: Effective Intervention Techniques for Overcoming Reading Problems in Older Students by Rudolph Wagner, Ph.D.
• Reading Difficulties – Their Diagnosis and Correction by Guy Bond and Miles Tinker
• Analyzing and Treating Reading Problems by Dorothy McGinnis and Dorothy Smith
• Helping The Wordblind: Effective Intervention Techniques for Overcoming Reading Problems in Older Students by Rudolph Wagner, Ph.D.
• Reading Difficulties – Their Diagnosis and Correction by Guy Bond and Miles Tinker
• Analyzing and Treating Reading Problems by Dorothy McGinnis and Dorothy Smith
Preparation / Organization of Remedial Reading Program
• What are the possibilities open to a student who has failed to acquire reading skills in a regular setting?
• Should he/she leave the school system?
• Get additional help within the system?
• Should he seek assistance outside the familiar setting?
• Is he doomed to failure?
These are questions we, as teachers (and/or parents), face and deal with as we see each and every student who fail the required ability in reading. We lack sufficient resources, both financial and physical to help these students. Some schools/teachers do not exert effort, while some simply do not know how. Existing facilities can be used; the leaders need not be teachers or experts; someone must assume responsibility for organizing the remedial program.
In-School Approaches
1. Modified Curriculum
2. Fortified Curriculum
3. Tutorial Support
a. in-school support
b. community support
c. combined approach
4. Resource Room
5. Special Education Classes
Out of School Approaches
1. Evening and Saturday Classes
2. Tutorial Centers
3. Contracted Services
4. Home Tutors
5. Special Intervention Programs
• Approaches depend on many factors (age, for example); and often, a combination of several approaches can be designed to meet specific needs.
• Effective teaching is organized—it follows a planned sequence of steps intended to encourage learning. Remedial teaching, however, is more difficult to organize owing to the complex factors underlying reading disability.
• These children have difficulty reading, they generally do not like it. To reach these students, it is crucial for remedial
reading teachers to make reading fun at the students’ levels. This involves finding interesting and lively reading materials,
playing games, using art and creativity during class, providing success every class period and rewarding students for hard work. Some schools have remedial reading as a pull-out program, and some have push-in programs. Pull-out programs are
necessary for some children to succeed in reading. It might be more effective to develop remedial programs for specific students.
Decisions Required of the Teacher
1. The teacher must decide whether the pupil actually is a struggling reader rather than a child of low ability.
2. He must decide what type of teaching is needed.
3. He must determine whether the needed remedial work can best be done in the classroom or in separate facilities and, if in the classroom, whether individually or in a sub-group.
4. He must make an estimate of the proper length of the instructional period.
5. He must determine the most efficient methods and materials that can be used.
6. He must be alert to and decide how to make adjustments for the child’s special interests, for any emotional or physical defects, or conditions in the child’s home and community environment that may block his reading growth.
7. He must be alert to and decide how to deal with the environmental factors, including the school that might be keeping the pupil from progressing in reading.
8. He must decide how to interpret to the pupil the progress he might make.
9. He must plan independent work activities for the pupil.
Principles of Remediation
1. Develop a plan of remediation, put it on paper, and refer to it frequently as remediation progresses.
2. Discover the child’s area of confidence. Remember:
a. The pupil is generally anxious and fearful of discussing his problem with an adult.
b. His anxiety and guilt are especially high when he has experienced disapproval of his parents.
c. The pupil’s “don’t care” attitude toward reading frequently is a “do care very much” attitude. It is a safety valve that permits the pupil to save face. Both teacher and parent should permit the pupil to have this apparent attitude without developing a feeling of guilt on the part of the pupil.
3. The corrective or remedial methods are hardly distinct from developmental methods. One cannot “re-teach” a pupil who never learned.
4. Develop those skills and abilities which are most necessary for immediate successful reading.
5. Remediation should be based on and accompanied by continuous diagnosis.
6. No one symptom, error, or mistake of itself implies an ailment of a general deficiency. Even the best reader will err at times.
7. Perfect results on a test do not mean complete mastery.
8. The child’s symptoms, if not correctly interpreted, may lead the teacher to provide the improper remediation.
9. The pattern of symptoms is usually more significant than the individual symptom.
10. Cures do not necessarily mean that the correct method of cure has been found.
11. No remedial method has universal application.
12. The teacher’s personality and his ability to enlist each child’s active cooperative are often more important than the specific method used. “Learning occurs in a relationship. Rapport is a subtle thing.” The pupil needs to develop a desire to learn. The teacher should:
a. Develop a constructive relationship with the pupil. Drop the role of an authoritative teacher. Become an interested teacher.
b. Be a genuine teacher.
c. Give total and unequivocal acceptance to the pupil despite his frequent failure in school.
d. Have complete faith in the pupil’s improvableness and ability to read.
e. Develop a feeling of empathy—not sympathy.
f. Have a structured, well-defined program.
g. Arouse interest by judicious choice of materials.
13. No two reading disability cases probably stem from the same sources, have exactly the same pattern, or need the same instruction.
14. Select materials that the pupil can handle and in which he is interested.
15. Instill in the pupil a feeling of responsibility for his own progress.
16. Some remedial approaches, if used flexibly, appear applicable to reading disability cases almost irrespective of cause.
17. Remedial sessions must be adapted to the pupil.
18. When we speak of remedial reading or reading disability, we often imply that there is a basic deficiency in the learner that impedes progress. It may be helpful to remind ourselves that the basic deficiency may be poor teaching.
19. When the teacher and child meet, a major part of the teacher’s armament must be knowledge of principles of learning. Many normal children learn readily in spite of repeated violations of learning principles. However, children with learning disabilities cannot do this.
Learning Principles Particularly Applicable in Dealing with Struggling Readers
a. The pupil learns by doing, learning occurs under conditions of practice, and over-learning is of crucial importance to poor readers.
b. The learner cannot learn without doing, but he won’t do anything without being rewarded.
c. Learning is often a matter of present organization and reorganization, not simply past accretion.
d. Letters might best be taught to most children as parts of a whole word, but the perceptual whole for the struggling reader often is the single letter.
e. The learner learns best when he is psychologically and physiologically ready to respond to the stimulus.
f. The teacher needs to ask himself whether he is trying to get the pupil to substitute one stimulus for another or whether he wants to elicit the correct response.
g. Each activity consists of a complex of individual movements, and improvement and learning are not necessarily attained by much reading but rather by increasing the number of correct movements in reading and by reducing the number of incorrect movements in the total complex of movements comprising the total capacity.
h. The remedial teacher cannot be satisfied if the pupil comes up with the right answer.
i. The teacher should exercise great care, especially with the struggling reader, to not permitting extraneous materials to come between the stimulus and the response.
j. The teacher will make fewer mistakes in teaching if he analyzes all the variables in behavior.
k. Learning retardation frequently results because the pupil cannot make the proper differentiations required for mastery of the learning task.
The Basic Reading Skills
I. Perception Skills
a. Visual perception of form
b. Visual perception of capital and lower-case letters and words
c. auditory perception of sounds
d. ability to move eyes from left to right and make accurate return sweeps
e. increased eye span
II. Comprehension Skills
a. Word meaning
1. matching words with pictures
2. reacting to the sensory images (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, taste, smell) suggested by words
3. associating meaning and experiences with word symbols
4. inferring meanings from context clues and understanding words in context
5. inferring meaning from word clues—roots, suffixes, prefixes, compounds
6. matching words with definitions
7. recognizing antonyms and synonyms
8. associating printed word symbols with other symbols such as:
a. musical notes, clef, sharp, flat, rest
b. mathematical signs, plus, minus, half-dollar, cents, circle
c. maps
d. diacritical marks in the dictionary
e. phrase, sentence, and paragraph meaning
f. reading the context
g. reading for the main idea
h. reading for details
1. recognizing and organizing facts and details
2. reading and following directions
III. Word Attack Skills
a. using word configuration clues
b. using contextual clues
c. learning structural analysis clues
1. inflectional endings
2. words ending in ing
3. doubling the consonant before adding ing
4. compound words
5. prefixes and suffixes
6. the apostrophe s (‘s)
7. the past tense with ed
8. the plural with es
9. the contractions
10. syllabication
d. Learning phonic skills
1. auditory discrimination of speech sounds
2. teaching the initial consonant sounds and beginning consonant substitution
3. teaching the short vowel sounds
4. teaching the ending consonants
5. teaching median vowel substitution
6. introducing the various sounds of a and u:
a. a as in “all”
b. a as in “car”
c. a as in “bass”
d. u as in “full” or “dull”
7. The consonant blends: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, etc.
8. the letters k and q
9. the long vowels
a. a, e, i, o, u
b. long vowel plus silent e
c. ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, oe, ow
10. the ly ending
11. the le ending
12. S pronounced as z
13. speech consonant ch, sh, th, wh, gh, ph
14. soft sounds c and g
15. three-letter consonant blends: scr, shr, spl, spr, squ, str, thr
16. the effect of r on a previous vowel: er, it, or, ur, and wa
17. The diphthongs: ei, ie, oi, oy, oo, ou, au, aw, ow, er, ue
18. syllabication
19. silent consonants
20. foreign words
21. special problems of two- and three-syllable words
IV. Reading-Study Skills
a. Dictionary skills
1. Definition—select correct meaning that fits the context
2. Alphabetizing
3. Syllabication
4. Accent and guide words
5. Use of thumb index
6. Pronunciation key
7. Diacritical marks
b. Location and reference skills—use of encyclopedias, almanacs,
• What are the possibilities open to a student who has failed to acquire reading skills in a regular setting?
• Should he/she leave the school system?
• Get additional help within the system?
• Should he seek assistance outside the familiar setting?
• Is he doomed to failure?
These are questions we, as teachers (and/or parents), face and deal with as we see each and every student who fail the required ability in reading. We lack sufficient resources, both financial and physical to help these students. Some schools/teachers do not exert effort, while some simply do not know how. Existing facilities can be used; the leaders need not be teachers or experts; someone must assume responsibility for organizing the remedial program.
In-School Approaches
1. Modified Curriculum
2. Fortified Curriculum
3. Tutorial Support
a. in-school support
b. community support
c. combined approach
4. Resource Room
5. Special Education Classes
Out of School Approaches
1. Evening and Saturday Classes
2. Tutorial Centers
3. Contracted Services
4. Home Tutors
5. Special Intervention Programs
• Approaches depend on many factors (age, for example); and often, a combination of several approaches can be designed to meet specific needs.
• Effective teaching is organized—it follows a planned sequence of steps intended to encourage learning. Remedial teaching, however, is more difficult to organize owing to the complex factors underlying reading disability.
• These children have difficulty reading, they generally do not like it. To reach these students, it is crucial for remedial
reading teachers to make reading fun at the students’ levels. This involves finding interesting and lively reading materials,
playing games, using art and creativity during class, providing success every class period and rewarding students for hard work. Some schools have remedial reading as a pull-out program, and some have push-in programs. Pull-out programs are
necessary for some children to succeed in reading. It might be more effective to develop remedial programs for specific students.
Decisions Required of the Teacher
1. The teacher must decide whether the pupil actually is a struggling reader rather than a child of low ability.
2. He must decide what type of teaching is needed.
3. He must determine whether the needed remedial work can best be done in the classroom or in separate facilities and, if in the classroom, whether individually or in a sub-group.
4. He must make an estimate of the proper length of the instructional period.
5. He must determine the most efficient methods and materials that can be used.
6. He must be alert to and decide how to make adjustments for the child’s special interests, for any emotional or physical defects, or conditions in the child’s home and community environment that may block his reading growth.
7. He must be alert to and decide how to deal with the environmental factors, including the school that might be keeping the pupil from progressing in reading.
8. He must decide how to interpret to the pupil the progress he might make.
9. He must plan independent work activities for the pupil.
Principles of Remediation
1. Develop a plan of remediation, put it on paper, and refer to it frequently as remediation progresses.
2. Discover the child’s area of confidence. Remember:
a. The pupil is generally anxious and fearful of discussing his problem with an adult.
b. His anxiety and guilt are especially high when he has experienced disapproval of his parents.
c. The pupil’s “don’t care” attitude toward reading frequently is a “do care very much” attitude. It is a safety valve that permits the pupil to save face. Both teacher and parent should permit the pupil to have this apparent attitude without developing a feeling of guilt on the part of the pupil.
3. The corrective or remedial methods are hardly distinct from developmental methods. One cannot “re-teach” a pupil who never learned.
4. Develop those skills and abilities which are most necessary for immediate successful reading.
5. Remediation should be based on and accompanied by continuous diagnosis.
6. No one symptom, error, or mistake of itself implies an ailment of a general deficiency. Even the best reader will err at times.
7. Perfect results on a test do not mean complete mastery.
8. The child’s symptoms, if not correctly interpreted, may lead the teacher to provide the improper remediation.
9. The pattern of symptoms is usually more significant than the individual symptom.
10. Cures do not necessarily mean that the correct method of cure has been found.
11. No remedial method has universal application.
12. The teacher’s personality and his ability to enlist each child’s active cooperative are often more important than the specific method used. “Learning occurs in a relationship. Rapport is a subtle thing.” The pupil needs to develop a desire to learn. The teacher should:
a. Develop a constructive relationship with the pupil. Drop the role of an authoritative teacher. Become an interested teacher.
b. Be a genuine teacher.
c. Give total and unequivocal acceptance to the pupil despite his frequent failure in school.
d. Have complete faith in the pupil’s improvableness and ability to read.
e. Develop a feeling of empathy—not sympathy.
f. Have a structured, well-defined program.
g. Arouse interest by judicious choice of materials.
13. No two reading disability cases probably stem from the same sources, have exactly the same pattern, or need the same instruction.
14. Select materials that the pupil can handle and in which he is interested.
15. Instill in the pupil a feeling of responsibility for his own progress.
16. Some remedial approaches, if used flexibly, appear applicable to reading disability cases almost irrespective of cause.
17. Remedial sessions must be adapted to the pupil.
18. When we speak of remedial reading or reading disability, we often imply that there is a basic deficiency in the learner that impedes progress. It may be helpful to remind ourselves that the basic deficiency may be poor teaching.
19. When the teacher and child meet, a major part of the teacher’s armament must be knowledge of principles of learning. Many normal children learn readily in spite of repeated violations of learning principles. However, children with learning disabilities cannot do this.
Learning Principles Particularly Applicable in Dealing with Struggling Readers
a. The pupil learns by doing, learning occurs under conditions of practice, and over-learning is of crucial importance to poor readers.
b. The learner cannot learn without doing, but he won’t do anything without being rewarded.
c. Learning is often a matter of present organization and reorganization, not simply past accretion.
d. Letters might best be taught to most children as parts of a whole word, but the perceptual whole for the struggling reader often is the single letter.
e. The learner learns best when he is psychologically and physiologically ready to respond to the stimulus.
f. The teacher needs to ask himself whether he is trying to get the pupil to substitute one stimulus for another or whether he wants to elicit the correct response.
g. Each activity consists of a complex of individual movements, and improvement and learning are not necessarily attained by much reading but rather by increasing the number of correct movements in reading and by reducing the number of incorrect movements in the total complex of movements comprising the total capacity.
h. The remedial teacher cannot be satisfied if the pupil comes up with the right answer.
i. The teacher should exercise great care, especially with the struggling reader, to not permitting extraneous materials to come between the stimulus and the response.
j. The teacher will make fewer mistakes in teaching if he analyzes all the variables in behavior.
k. Learning retardation frequently results because the pupil cannot make the proper differentiations required for mastery of the learning task.
The Basic Reading Skills
I. Perception Skills
a. Visual perception of form
b. Visual perception of capital and lower-case letters and words
c. auditory perception of sounds
d. ability to move eyes from left to right and make accurate return sweeps
e. increased eye span
II. Comprehension Skills
a. Word meaning
1. matching words with pictures
2. reacting to the sensory images (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, taste, smell) suggested by words
3. associating meaning and experiences with word symbols
4. inferring meanings from context clues and understanding words in context
5. inferring meaning from word clues—roots, suffixes, prefixes, compounds
6. matching words with definitions
7. recognizing antonyms and synonyms
8. associating printed word symbols with other symbols such as:
a. musical notes, clef, sharp, flat, rest
b. mathematical signs, plus, minus, half-dollar, cents, circle
c. maps
d. diacritical marks in the dictionary
e. phrase, sentence, and paragraph meaning
f. reading the context
g. reading for the main idea
h. reading for details
1. recognizing and organizing facts and details
2. reading and following directions
III. Word Attack Skills
a. using word configuration clues
b. using contextual clues
c. learning structural analysis clues
1. inflectional endings
2. words ending in ing
3. doubling the consonant before adding ing
4. compound words
5. prefixes and suffixes
6. the apostrophe s (‘s)
7. the past tense with ed
8. the plural with es
9. the contractions
10. syllabication
d. Learning phonic skills
1. auditory discrimination of speech sounds
2. teaching the initial consonant sounds and beginning consonant substitution
3. teaching the short vowel sounds
4. teaching the ending consonants
5. teaching median vowel substitution
6. introducing the various sounds of a and u:
a. a as in “all”
b. a as in “car”
c. a as in “bass”
d. u as in “full” or “dull”
7. The consonant blends: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, etc.
8. the letters k and q
9. the long vowels
a. a, e, i, o, u
b. long vowel plus silent e
c. ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, oe, ow
10. the ly ending
11. the le ending
12. S pronounced as z
13. speech consonant ch, sh, th, wh, gh, ph
14. soft sounds c and g
15. three-letter consonant blends: scr, shr, spl, spr, squ, str, thr
16. the effect of r on a previous vowel: er, it, or, ur, and wa
17. The diphthongs: ei, ie, oi, oy, oo, ou, au, aw, ow, er, ue
18. syllabication
19. silent consonants
20. foreign words
21. special problems of two- and three-syllable words
IV. Reading-Study Skills
a. Dictionary skills
1. Definition—select correct meaning that fits the context
2. Alphabetizing
3. Syllabication
4. Accent and guide words
5. Use of thumb index
6. Pronunciation key
7. Diacritical marks
b. Location and reference skills—use of encyclopedias, almanacs,
magazines, card catalogues, etc.
1. locating specific information in a textbook
2. locating material in the index
3. ability to interpret cross references and to use the table of contents,
1. locating specific information in a textbook
2. locating material in the index
3. ability to interpret cross references and to use the table of contents,
glossary, and footnotes
c. Use of maps, charts, tables, and footnotes
c. Use of maps, charts, tables, and footnotes
d. Use of library resources: card
catalogue, indexes
e. Organization skills
1. selecting main ideas
2. ability to follow directions
3. arranging events and items in sequence
4. putting together ideas from various sources
5. answering questions that are answered in a printed passage
6. summarizing
7. outlining and underlining
8. note-taking
9. ability to retain and apply what has been read
10. ability to use study-methods, such as the SQRR method—surveying, questioning,
e. Organization skills
1. selecting main ideas
2. ability to follow directions
3. arranging events and items in sequence
4. putting together ideas from various sources
5. answering questions that are answered in a printed passage
6. summarizing
7. outlining and underlining
8. note-taking
9. ability to retain and apply what has been read
10. ability to use study-methods, such as the SQRR method—surveying, questioning,
reading,
recitation, review
11. Ability to read in specific content areas
12. Perceiving relationships: part-whole, cause-effect; general-specific; place, sequence,
11. Ability to read in specific content areas
12. Perceiving relationships: part-whole, cause-effect; general-specific; place, sequence,
size,
and time.
V. Interpretative and Appreciative Skills
a. evaluating what is read
b. predicting and anticipating outcomes
c. perceiving relationships or comparisons
d. suspending judgment
e. making inferences and drawing conclusions
f. interpreting figurative expressions and picturesque language
g. detecting bias
h. detecting author’s mood and purpose
i. filtering facts
j. differentiating between fact and opinion
k. weighing facts as to their importance
l. analyzing opinions
m. recognizing literary form
n. Detecting and understanding the writer’s purpose
o. Identifying and evaluating character traits, reactions, and motives
p. Recognizing literary and semantic devices and identifying the tone
q. Determining whether the text affirms, denies, or fails to express as opinion about a supposed fact or condition
VI. Rate of Comprehension Skills
a. Left-to-right progression
b. Reduction of regressions
c. Phrase reading
d. Reduction of vocalization
e. Ability to choose an appropriate reading technique-flexibility
f. Scanning for specific information
g. Skimming skills
VII. Oral Reading Skills
a. Keeping eye ahead of the voice
b. Enunciating clearly
c. Pronouncing correctly
d. Reading in thought units
e. Varying pitch and volume of voice
f. Adapting voice to size of room and audience
Procedures For Remediation
• Remediation usually involves the teaching of fundamental skills. It should be stressed that they be taught within the framework of a goal-oriented process, and not as separate entities.
V. Interpretative and Appreciative Skills
a. evaluating what is read
b. predicting and anticipating outcomes
c. perceiving relationships or comparisons
d. suspending judgment
e. making inferences and drawing conclusions
f. interpreting figurative expressions and picturesque language
g. detecting bias
h. detecting author’s mood and purpose
i. filtering facts
j. differentiating between fact and opinion
k. weighing facts as to their importance
l. analyzing opinions
m. recognizing literary form
n. Detecting and understanding the writer’s purpose
o. Identifying and evaluating character traits, reactions, and motives
p. Recognizing literary and semantic devices and identifying the tone
q. Determining whether the text affirms, denies, or fails to express as opinion about a supposed fact or condition
VI. Rate of Comprehension Skills
a. Left-to-right progression
b. Reduction of regressions
c. Phrase reading
d. Reduction of vocalization
e. Ability to choose an appropriate reading technique-flexibility
f. Scanning for specific information
g. Skimming skills
VII. Oral Reading Skills
a. Keeping eye ahead of the voice
b. Enunciating clearly
c. Pronouncing correctly
d. Reading in thought units
e. Varying pitch and volume of voice
f. Adapting voice to size of room and audience
Procedures For Remediation
• Remediation usually involves the teaching of fundamental skills. It should be stressed that they be taught within the framework of a goal-oriented process, and not as separate entities.
• Guidelines:
– Decide how often the therapy sessions will be held. This is dictated by the constraints on the teacher or specialist, but the greater the frequency of the meetings, the more possible improvement
– Decide how long each session will be. Younger children need shorter sessions, usually no longer than forty-five minutes, and older children often can stay on task for an hour.
– Decide on how many different aims can be accomplished each session. Two or three quite different activities are probably enough. The therapist should follow the principle of a balanced program. For instance, a word attack skill, a comprehension exercise, and a study skill could make up a session.
– Provide an opportunity for success for the child. Begin with material that he can read easily, and slowly work up into more difficult things. Also make use of the teaching method with which the child is most successful.
– Keep the student informed of the reasons for each activity, and keep him aware of the progress he is making.
– Convince the student that he or she is a worthwhile individual who can learn.
Summary
• Remedial reading activities can be organized by employing basic strategies and varying them to fit individual needs and situations.
• Programs may include various in-school and out-of-school approaches, and combinations of these.
• To be effective, remedial programs must be clearly focused and well-planned.
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