The number of children in child care is quickly increasing. Early childcare can lay the foundations for reading, and help prevent reading problems from developing. This article describes the current state of child care, and the challenges we face in improving its quality.
Four strategies and practices are common to effective reading instruction programs: multi-tiered systems of support; universal screening, progress monitoring, and collaboration between special education and general education. This article provides links to tools that support implementation in each area.
Is your school planning to implement student progress monitoring (SPM)? Are you thinking of using it in your classroom? If so, consider a number of factors to make SPM an integral part of classroom activities, rather than a series of isolated assessments unconnected to other parts of the learning experience. This brief offers some suggestions on how to use SPM in an integrated way.
The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities developed an overview on screening, diagnosing and serving children age four or younger. The document was developed for researchers, administrators, and people who need an academic overview.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the Council on Children with Disabilities published a statement summarizing what is currently known about visual problems and dyslexia. The statement also covers what treatments are and are not recommended when diagnosing and treating vision problems, learning disabilities, and dyslexia.
In these three video presentations, teachers, administrators, and parents learn from the experts about how to identify students who are at risk for reading struggles in pre-k and early elementary school. You will also discover best practices for teaching all students to read, including those who need additional interventions.
If you are planning to purchase a literacy program for instruction, get as much information as you can about a program’s benefits and effectiveness. This article includes links to reputable review sources, where you can find basic comparative information about a range of commercially available literacy programs.
This article provides sample reading lessons in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension to support special education instructors, reading interventionists, and others working with students who struggle with reading.
In this statement, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) identifies the characteristics of students more likely to be retained and the impact of retention at the secondary school level, late adolescence, and early adulthood. NASP also provides a long list of alternatives to retention and social promotion.
This paper presents six principles designed to prevent writing difficulties as well as to build writing skills: (a) providing effective writing instruction, (b) tailoring instruction to meet the individual needs,(c) intervening early, (d) expecting that each child will learn to write, (e) identifying and addressing roadblocks to writing, and (f) employing technologies.
Hispanic students in the United States are at especially high risk of reading difficulties. Despite progress over the past 15 to 20 years, they are about twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to read well below average for their age.
This influential 1998 report was developed by The Committee for the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, established by the National Academy of Sciences to study the comparative effectiveness of interventions for young children who are at risk of having problems learning to read. The primary goal of the project was to translate the research findings about reading into advice and guidance for parents, educators, and others involved in the literacy development of young children.
Knowing children with a family history of difficulties are more likely to have trouble learning to read means that efforts can be made with these children to prevent difficulties from developing.
The following is a general list of risk factors for reading difficulties by grade level. Please note that the list is not all-inclusive and should be interpreted with reference to age and grade expectations.
For almost 40 percent of kids, learning to read is a challenge. So in addition to talking, reading, and writing with their child, families play another important role — being on the lookout for early signs of possible trouble.
Learn about an early intervening system being developed for young children, called Recognition and Response, designed to help parents and teachers respond to learning difficulties in young children who may be at risk for learning disabilities as early as possible, beginning at age 3 or 4, before they experience school failure and before they are referred for formal evaluation and possible placement in special education.
This article discusses current research-supported instructional practices in reading and writing. It also reviews alternatives to ability-achievement discrepancy in identifying students for special education services, as well as introduces the idea that ability-achievement discrepancies should be based on specific cognitive factors that are relevant to specific kinds of learning disabilities rather than Full Scale IQ.
The purpose of this National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) report is to examine the concepts, potential benefits, practical issues, and unanswered questions associated with responsiveness to intervention (RTI) and learning disabilities (LD). A brief overview of the approach is provided, including attributes, characteristics, and promising features, as well as issues, concerns, unanswered questions, and research needs.
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can play a number of important roles in using RTI to identify children with disabilities and provide needed instruction to struggling students in both general education and special education settings. But these roles will require some fundamental changes in the way SLPs engage in assessment and intervention activities.
Learn more about the four recommended practices in Response to Intervention (RTI): universal screening; progress monitoring and differentiation; systematic skill instruction; and system-wide implementation.
This article briefly highlights the knowledge base on reading and RTI for ELLs, and provides preliminary support for the use of practices related to RTI with this population.
Learn what questions to ask about Response to Intervention (RTI), an approach to helping struggling learners that is gaining momentum in schools across the country. This article from the National Association of School Psychologists tells you the most important features of the process, key terms, and RTI’s relationship to special education evaluation.
Response to Instruction (RTI) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are two great ideas for making sure the curriculum reaches all students. Learn about how you can implement these ideas as part of your regular routine in the general education classroom.
The National Center on Intensive Intervention has created a chart of scientifically based tools to measure students’ progress. Determine which one best fits your school’s needs.
