The reader’s theater strategy blends students’ desire to perform with their need for oral reading practice. Reader’s Theater offers an entertaining and engaging means of improving fluency and enhancing comprehension.
ELLs can benefit from Reader’s Theater activities in a number of ways, including fluency practice, comprehension, engaging in a story, and focusing on vocal and physical expression. Kristina Robertson offers a number of approaches to Reader’s Theater with ELLs in this article.
Originally designed with seventh grade students, Reciprocal Teaching is a research-based strategy that teaches students to work in small groups to coordinate the use of four comprehension strategies: prediction, clarification, summarization, and student-generated questions. This article illustrates how to implement Reciprocal Teaching for the Primary Grades (RTPG). Modifications include: additional strategies, cue cards with pictures and scripts, group work interspersed with whole class follow-up, and an independent written component for individual student accountability.
Students with ASD can have strengths or challenges in either word recognition and language comprehension that will impact reading comprehension. It is important to assess, monitor, and track the word recognition or decoding skills and language comprehension skills as you evaluate reading comprehension.
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.
Learning to read is a challenge for many kids, but most can become good readers if they get the right help. Here are some signs to look for and things to do if you suspect your child is having trouble reading.
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.
Although more research is needed, the research we do have suggests that knowing how to speak English makes it easier to learn to read English. This article makes some recommendations for teaching reading to non-English-speaking children, and raises questions for future research.
Early childhood programs and elementary schools in the United States operate in widely differing contexts with varying levels of funding and resources. Regardless of the resources available, professionals have an ethical responsibility to teach, to the best of their ability, according to the standards of the profession.
It’s called lots of different things: Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), and Million Minutes to name a few. Regardless of the different names, the intent is the same — to develop fluent readers by providing time during the school day for students to select a book and read quietly. Nearly every classroom provides some time during the instructional day for this independent silent reading. Despite its widespread use in classrooms, silent reading hasn’t enjoyed much support in the research literature.
Young kids love technology, gadgets, and nature! While parents may be looking for ways to reduce screen time for their kids, here are a few helpful suggestions for integrating simple technology and books into your outdoor adventures in a fun and educational way.
Science and math explorations give your growing reader a chance to strengthen observation and writing skills by keeping a special journal to fill with sketches, notes, and graphs. Try these ideas to get your child started.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be easy to miss in young children. Some behaviors involving social communication, social interaction, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests may be red flags for ASD.
Libraries are great resources for families with young children; you can find books, entertainment, educational and cultural enrichment, literacy tips, and other valuable information. Here are nine reasons to visit your public library!
Research has demonstrated that the most effective read alouds are those where children are actively involved asking and answering questions and making predictions, rather than passively listening. This article describes in detail a technique for a three-step interactive read aloud using sophisticated storybooks.
Making the teaching of reading into a research-based profession requires that research findings be trustworthy and understandable to the classroom teacher. This article summarizes recent initiatives to improve the use of reading research in the classroom, and argues for increased efforts in these areas.
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.
Respectful redirection is a quick, in-the-moment classroom strategy to give corrective, clear feedback to students in a neutral way. Learn how to use this strategy, why it works, and see it in action.
In this overview, learn how to capitalize on the benefits of incorporating different types of technology in literacy instruction (such as electronic books, and reading intervention programs) while minimizing the potential pitfalls.
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.
