With all the talk in the news about politics and education, it's good to look at what is really going on in regards to education and literacy:

These statistics expose serious economic consequences for individuals, state governments, and the nation.

In order to address these issues, we must first understand what is creating this great literacy deficit. There are three key contributors:

1. The presence of learning disabilities.
2. The fact that reading is a declining activity among teenagers and adults.
3. Secondary teachers receive limited training in adolescent literacy instruction. Each factor is discussed in more detail below.

Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities are common sources of reading problems. The most common and carefully studied learning disability is dyslexia, which affects five to 17 percent of the school-aged population, and affects 80 percent of individuals who are characterized as having a learning disability (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2001). Dyslexia affects reader’s ability to convert visual information into sounds, which makes it difficult to decode words and identify them. Fortunately,  research has shown that the brain can be “rewired” to learn these relationships with intensive phonics training (Shaywitz, S., 2003).

It is important to identify and address these deficits. Shaywitz & Shaywitz (2001) assert that “both dyslexic and non-impaired readers improve their reading scores as they get older, but studies show that the gap between the dyslexic and the non-impaired readers remains” (p. 3). In addition, Archer, et. al. (2003) report that, “74% of students identified with reading disabilities in third grade continue to have significant reading challenges in ninth grade (p. 89),” which illustrates the importance of providing appropriate intervention in intensive, systematic phonics training to struggling readers.

Reading Rates

A second contributing factor to low literacy skills is the fact that reading is declining as an activity among teenagers. Less than one-third of 13-year-olds in America read daily, and fifteen- to 24-year-olds spend 7-10 minutes a day reading voluntarily (NEA, 2007). When reading does occur, it often competes with other forms of media, which suggests “less focused engagement with a text” (p. 10). Struggling readers are less often engaged in text because they are less motivated to read (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Consequently, as the complexity of text increases, students fall further behind.

Teacher Training

A third factor that contributes to the challenges of appropriately addressing adolescent literacy deficits is the fact that secondary teachers receive limited training in adolescent literacy instruction. All secondary teachers are not expected to be trained in teaching foundational literacy skills; however, if content teachers were familiar with some of the literacy strategies used by the reading specialist or special education teacher, they could pre-teach difficult vocabulary and their class could decode difficult words together (NIFL, 2008).

In addition, secondary teachers are often frustrated that remediation services are less available and less effective for their struggling adolescent students than they are for struggling young readers and that fewer resources are directed to secondary schools for literacy. Reading and literacy specialists, administrators, and teachers are all important resources to systematically address struggling readers’ needs (NIFL, 2008).

Conclusion

In order to improve education and build a more literate nation, teachers must be trained to teach reading to students with learning disabilities and learn how to teach foundational literacy skills. As teachers learn how to remediate reading difficulties, struggling students will be more motivated to read because it will be less taxing. Teachers also need to help students discover texts that relate to their interests and match their reading level.

This post was adapted from an article on Heidi Hyte’s blog, ESLtrail.com

We were so excited to have reading expert Kathy Chappell-Muncy present a webinar for us! She presented on “The Essential Need for Orton Gillingham Based Reading Instruction” and did a fabulous job!

Just so you know, Orton Gillingham based reading instruction is a systematic intervention used for struggling readers that includes visual, auditory, and kinesthetic components to engage the child’s entire brain. Here are some questions and answers from Kathy’s wonderful webinar:

What is a joint and cut off point?

We don’t have the resources to put every child that is a poor reader into special services. So, where do we draw the line? There is no natural cut-off. Schools make up a cut point not based on research. It has been assigned arbitrary. So we miss kids… these are the kids that fall through the cracks. But if we give all kids a systematic, Orton Gillingham reading intervention, these students don’t have to fall through the cracks.

What are your recommendations for a child who has a lisp?  Is it important to remediate this (for a 7 year old) or to continue to work with speech, singing, rhythm waiting until the child is 8 or 9?

Very important to remediate. A child who has a lisp is going to get special services with a speech pathologist. However, I’m going to recommend a fabulous pronunciation tool from Reading Horizons that shows animated tongue placements and footage of a mouth saying each sound.

Click here to try Reading Horizons Pronunciation Tool for free! >

I’m tutoring two fourth graders that can barely read, and I was wondering if they need to start from scratch with an Orton Gillingham based approach?

What they need to start from is a great assessment. Use as many assessments that you can use. One that I use is the San Diego Quick Assessment. It is whole word based and they have to read the words with automaticity or they get it wrong. But if you have a child that is reading two grade levels below or more, you want to do more than one assessment. You need a diagnostic assessment. Another one is called, CORE, online assessments (as long as they go into segments – decoding, vowels, diphthongs, syllables). Look for assessments that go deep and that will diagnose for you. Also, there are some free assessments on Reading Horizons website.

Click here to try Reading Horizons Assessments for free! >

How does this program work with adult and ESL students?

For years I worked with ESL students and we used an Orton Gillingham approach with them. Using an Orton Gillingham approach we became the highest scoring school for ESL students. By adding a tactile approach to the instruction, the students finally started to get it.

It works great for adults as well as long as long as you are using age appropriate activities.

Do you have an opinion about retaining a child in the same grade if they struggle with reading?

As a parent or teacher you have to look at what the child is being taught with. Dependent on the teacher using it and the way it is being used, the child may need another year. But if the teacher and program are the problem then they may just need remediation. Regardless, if a child isn’t reading by the end of the first grade then there is something going on and you need to look into it before making a decision.

View the free webinar recording now! >

One day this cute lady called us just frantic. She had been using the home use version of our product with her dyslexic son and he had improved to some degree but it just wasn’t helping him like she thought it should be. She was desperately trying to figure out what more she could do to help him. I could tell she would do anything and it broke my heart to hear this cute worried mom who felt like she had found the program that would offer him the best chance of success but it still wasn’t clicking like she had expected. How could she help her child from drowning in school?

I didn't want her son to drown either! So, the next time our Dyslexia Specialist and Teacher Trainer, Shantell Berrett, was in the office I asked her what she advises teachers and parents to do when our program (or any research based reading program) just isn’t working for a student like it does for others. Here’s what she had to say:



1. Make sure it’s being taught and implemented with fidelity.

There is so much to take in when you are trained in a program or methodology and although you retain a lot, it would be impossible to remember everything. You may be accidentally leaving out an important step in the instruction process. Luckily, as Shantell said, a small tweak in the instruction can drastically change how well a student responds to a research based intervention.

If you ever want to review instruction strategies for the Reading Horizons methodology, our Online Workshop is the perfect tool! Register for 30-days of free access! >

2. Make sure the student is practicing sufficiently without overkill.

The other week we posted an article about dictation and how one teacher had moved her class from a 50% passing rate to a 96% passing rate in vocabulary. The most interesting thing to me was that the one student who didn’t pass was the only one who refused to participate in the dictation process. Maybe you are instructing with full fidelity but if you have a student that isn’t showing progress, you may want to review how they are practicing the concepts, perhaps they are skipping steps that are vital to their success.

It is also important to point out that Shantell said that sufficient practice is important, but not overkill. Reading practice should not become a student’s life, or an intense big deal. This will only cause the student to dread and avoid reading practice. 

3. Try a different presentation or a different research-based reading program.

If you have assured that the program is being instructed and practiced with fidelity and the student still isn’t getting it, it may be time to try a different program. It still needs to be research based, but maybe manipulatives in exchange for a marking system or vice versa would work better for the student. Maybe even use the same methodology but with a different instructor. Sometimes having someone different explain something to you can change everything. Not because one teacher is better than the other, but because they may just be a better match for that student.

What’s worked for you? What suggestions do you have? Let us know!

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance:  but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath" Matthew 25:29.  Researchers speak of this syndrome as the "Matthew Effect"—which is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

First coined in 1983, by Walberg and Tsai, the "Matthew Effect" states that without intervention, students who start out with some literacy advantages tend to thrive and grow academically, while their less fortunate peers tend to get left behind. 

This is what respected author and psychologist, Margaret J. Kay, Ed.D. had to say about the matter:

“The past five years have brought major breakthroughs in our knowledge of how children learn to read and why so many fail. These new insights have been translated into techniques for teaching reading to beginning readers, including the many students who would otherwise encounter difficulties in mastering this fundamental skill.

Students who do not ‘learn to read’ during the first three years of school experience enormous difficulty when they are subsequently asked to ‘read to learn.’ Teaching students to read by the end of third grade is the single most important task assigned to elementary schools. During the first three years of schooling, students ‘learn to read.’

That is, they develop the capacity to interpret the written symbols for the oral language that they have been hearing since birth. Starting in fourth grade, schooling takes on a very different purpose, one that in many ways is more complex and demanding of higher-order thinking skills. If efficient reading skills are not developed by this time, the English language, history, mathematics, current events, and the rich tapestries of literature and science become inaccessible.

More students fail to learn to read by the end of the third grade than many people imagine. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that all schools encounter students who fall into this category and that all schools should have plans for addressing the special needs of these students.

In its 1994 Reading Assessment, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a federally supported program that tracks the performance of American students in core academic subjects, reported that more than four out of 10 fourth-graders (42 percent) in American schools were reading at a ‘below basic’ level. This means that they could not understand ‘uncomplicated narratives and high-interest informative texts.’

NAEP also reported that such illiteracy persists in the higher grades. The report found that nearly one-third (31 percent) of eighth-graders and nearly one-third (30 percent) of twelfth-graders are also reading at a ‘below basic’ level. The latter figures probably understate the problem, because many poor readers drop out of school before twelfth grade.

In contrast to popular belief, reading failure is not concentrated among particular types of schools or among specific groups of students. To the contrary, students who have difficulty reading represent a virtual cross-section of American children. They include rich and poor, male and female, rural and urban, and public and private school children in all sections of the country. According to the NAEP assessment, for example, nearly one-third (32 percent) of fourth graders whose parents graduated from college are reading at the ‘below basic’ level.”

Thank you Dr. Kay! So, it looks like the “Matthew Effect” doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to struggling readers. Could it be that we haven’t given teachers the reading skills, tools, and strategies they need to actually teach students how to decode words?

I say, that's a fact.

What do you say?

The Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy (SRCL) formula grant is authorized by the Appropriations Act to provide $250 million under Section 1520 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to develop a comprehensive literacy and education program to advance literacy skills for students from birth through grade twelve.

The Act reserves $10 million for formula grants to assist states in: 1) creating or maintaining a SRCL State Literacy Team with expertise in literacy development and education for children birth through grade twelve, and 2) developing a comprehensive literacy plan.

Recently the Department of Education awarded six states the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant: Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas received monies totaling $180,500,000.

Striving Readers is a program that aims to

• Raise middle and high school students' literacy levels in Title I-eligible schools with significant numbers of students reading below grade-levels.
• Build a strong, scientific research base for identifying and replicating strategies that improve adolescent literacy skills.

Right now is the perfect time to start looking for 2012 grant opportunities. Reading Horizons is committed to helping you locate grants to help you advance literacy skills through screening and assessment, targeted interventions for students reading below grade level, and professional development training for your teachers.

Visit our website to get grant information!