Improving the effectiveness of interventions for struggling readers requires a school-level system for early identification of ‘at risk’ students and then providing those students with intensive interventions. Learn from Reading First schools with demonstrated success in reaching struggling readers.
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.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
This is a checklist to help educators carry out the five recommendations made in the What Works Clearninghouse report “Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention (RTI) and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades.”
Who can understand all the jargon that’s being tossed around in education these days? Consider all the similar terms that have to do with the sounds of spoken words — phonics, phonetic spelling, phoneme awareness, phonological awareness, and phonology — all of them share the same “phon” root, so they are easy to confuse, but they are definitely different, and each, in its way, is very important in reading education.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Research shows that students need at least 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction each day to become strong readers, and that this instruction must be systematic, explicit, scaffolded, and differentiated across the classroom.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Dr. Jack Fletcher is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston. Dr. Fletcher, a child neuropsychologist, has conducted research on many issues related to dyslexia and other learning disabilities, including definition and classification, neurobiological correlates, and intervention. Dr. Fletcher has written more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
When some children are learning to read, they catch on so quickly that it appears effortless. It does not seem to matter what reading curriculum or teachers they encounter, for they arrive at school already possessing the important foundational skills. For other children, though, the path to literacy is far more difficult and by no means assured. It matters very much what curriculum their schools use and who their first teachers are.
Find out how an elementary school in Sheridan, Wyoming transformed their literacy instruction from a balanced literacy approach to a structured literacy framework. Integrating systematic and explicit instruction resulted in improved reading and writing achievement for their students, and professional growth for all of the teachers.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, experts answer real questions from families about reading and writing, and how to support their children at home.
Learn more about the four types of reading assessments: universal screeners, diagnostic tests, progress monitoring tools, and summative assessments. It’s important to begin by asking yourself: “What do I want to know about my students? What do I want to assess?”
Good spellers aren’t born, they are taught! Nearly 90 percent of English words can be spelled if a student knows basic patterns, principles, and rules of spelling. Good spellers end up as better readers and writers.
