If you suspect that your child would benefit from using AT at school, it’s important to discuss your observations, suggestions, and questions with your child’s teachers. Make time to speak in person. In this article, you’ll find tips for opening the conversation with example conversation starters.
Learn about American Sign Language (ASL)/English bilingual programs to support the acquisition, learning, and use of ASL and English to meet the needs of diverse learners who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.
Reading instruction does not need to stop when the bell rings. Using out-of-school time (OST) can be an effective way to boost academic skills while engaging students outside of the classroom. Education research lab McREL reviews effective afterschool and summer programs that focus on reading, and identifies the components that make them successful.
Many computer products have built-in accessibility options such as text-to-speech, screen magnification options, or voice input controls. Learn what some of these optional features are and how to integrate them into instruction and studying.
The National Reading Panel identified three predominant elements to support the development of reading comprehension skills: vocabulary instruction, active reading, and teacher preparation to deliver strategy instruction.
Leaders at the Arlington County (Virginia) NAACP call on the Superintendent of APS Public Schools to adopt evidence-based reading instruction in every district K-3 classroom. Our children’s literacy is a critical civil rights and equity issue. Every child has the right to consistent, high-quality instruction.
Give your students a chance to deepen and share their travel experiences through narrative writing, diagrams and illustrations, and the reading of all kinds of print (including maps, brochures and menus). Authentic reading and writing experiences help students connect what’s happening in class to the real world outside.
Dr. Lorraine Valdez Pierce offers an in-depth introduction to assessment for teachers of English language learners — including performance-based standardized assessments, assessment as a tool for informing instruction, use of assessment to reinforce reading comprehension, and student self-assessment and self-monitoring.
Evidence-based means using classroom practices based on clear and convincing proof from well-designed research and data analysis. Find out what to look for in identifying best practices.
Writing is a highly complex language skill. Without skilled, systematic instruction, many students — particularly those with disabilities — may not become proficient writers. At stake is access to the general education curriculum. This brief discusses developmental stages, why writing may pose particular challenges for students with disabilities, and what areas should be the focus for remediation.
Learn some best practices in helping children with language processing issues learn to read in this Q&A with expert Nanci Bell, director of Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes. Find out what works with children who have weaknesses in concept imagery or symbol imagery.
Blending and segmenting games and activities can help students to develop phonemic awareness — the ability to hear the individual sounds in spoken words. Begin with segmenting and blending syllables, and then move to working with individual sounds (phonemes). Learning to blend and segment sounds is key to learning to read.
To comprehend a story or text, young readers need a threshold of knowledge about the topic, and tougher state standards place increasing demands on children’s prior knowledge. This article offers practical classroom strategies to build background knowledge such as using contrasts and comparisons and encouraging topic-focused wide reading.
What should fluency instruction look like? And what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers’? This article can help practitioners effectively use fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.
From difficulty recognizing the individual sounds in spoken words to developing and maintaining the motivation to read, here are the most common reasons why children can struggle with reading.
Paired reading is a strategy to help students build fluency by reading aloud to each other. More fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers, or children who read at the same level can be paired to reread a story.
