What is reading? And what are the core skills that young children need to become successful readers? Learning to read is complex, but this overview can help explain key terms and demystify the process.
Getting support for your struggling reader. Learning to read is a challenge for almost 40 percent of kids — and a challenge for their parents. Hosted by Al Roker, the show visits schools in Huntingtown, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon, to see how families learn to identify early signs of reading problems and find ideas for getting their kids the help and support they need to succeed at reading.
Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers — and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here’s how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.
Teach your students to avoid the avoidance of writing. Learn how to lead them down the path of enthusiasm and self-confidence about writing through research-proven strategies.
Being a fluent reader is an important part of being a successful reader. Here is an overview of considerations related to fluency, and techniques teachers can use for promoting fluency in the classroom.
Text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of assistive technology that reads digital text aloud. It’s sometimes called “read aloud” technology. TTS can take words on a computer or other digital device and convert them into audio. TTS is very helpful for kids who struggle with reading, but it can also help kids with writing and editing, and even focusing.
Some parents are reluctant to contact their child’s teacher. Don’t be! A quick conversation or email exchange can go a long way toward resolving issues. Here are three situations where parent contact is a good idea.
The identification of a child with dyslexia is a difficult process, but there are ways that parents and teachers can learn more about the reading difficulty and support the child’s learning.
With young children, dictation offers a way for a parent or a teacher to record a child’s thoughts or ideas when the writing demands surpass writing skills. Dictation provides a chance for an adult to model many writing behaviors including handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence formation.
Timed repeated readings are an instructional practice for monitoring students’ fluency development. Repeated readings, under timed conditions, of familiar instructional level text can increase students’ reading speed which can improve comprehension.
Review well-established scientific findings about reading and their practical implications, for children with and without reading disabilities. In addition, consider some broader ways that science may be useful to educators and get suggestions for individual teachers interested in becoming more familiar with scientific research on reading.
The NAEP 2000 reading results provides further evidence of a longstanding gap in verbal skills between rich and poor children in the United States. This article describes the history of this achievement gap, speculates on its causes, and makes recommendations for closing it.
