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The article explains how to encourage children who never developed an independent reading habit to become better readers. It offers 14 strategies such as but not limited to asking the right questions, and understanding the learning rhythm of the student.

By: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. (n.d.). All About Adolescent Literacy. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://www.adlit.org/article/27269/

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"I don't like to read because I don't know how to read."
- Eighth-grader Kenny in Just Teach Me, Mrs. K., by Mary Krogness

How can you motivate adolescents who have never turned on to the magic of reading? Tutoring teenagers is as much about building self-confidence as teaching skills. Low self-image and feelings of powerlessness trouble many unmotivated adolescents.

Teenagers who have disengaged from reading probably had difficulty learning to read in the primary grades, according to most research. At this critical age, they missed the pleasure of getting lost in a story or discovering new information in books. By their teenage years, reading becomes a school-imposed activity. As adults, they might read well enough to get by, but they miss the personal satisfaction and professional benefits that good literacy skills provide.

Critical literacy is a state of being "wide-awake," says educator and author Maxine Green, in Landscapes of Learning. Think of tutoring, then, as awakening a young person to the expansive world of print information, literature, and the infinite possibilities of reading, writing, and talking. Here are 14 questions to consider as you prepare for your unique tutoring situation.

What activities establish a good relationship?

"Learning to read begins with the reader," says noted educator Paolo Freire. Get acquainted conversations can provide an informal reading profile of your student. Direct questions like "what are your grades in English?" will put a student on the spot. Instead, ask about their school preferences, activities with friends and family, passions, and preoccupations. Also, you can seek teachers' suggestions concerning learning style preferences and personal needs, and for ideas on appropriate reading and teaching materials.

Both experience and research show that no single strategy works when it comes to teaching reading, because each reader is unique. If you accept the student as your guide, you can custom-design literacy activities to raise self-confidence, bring meaning to reading, and create a satisfying tutoring relationship.

Are you willing to be flexible and collaborate?

Choice and control are key issues with adolescent learners. If a tutoring schedule and atmosphere promotes collaboration and flexibility, the student gains a voice in determining what, where, when, and how the work gets done. Ask the student to discuss his feelings about the tutoring sessions. Are they held at a good time and place? Would he choose to change anything? What does he hope to gain from tutoring? Some decisions must clearly be yours, like what you can and cannot offer and start and end times. If you are prompt and dependable, those expectations will also extend to the student. Collaborate with the student to make a calendar of meetings and check that you both have a copy. Clear expectations on both sides will launch a relationship based on trust.

What are the "learning rhythms" of your student?

Learning rhythms will emerge during tutoring sessions. Does a student go strong for 15 minutes and then feel restless, or does she have a hard time settling down? After a few sessions, this knowledge can help structure your work time. A warm-up conversation about a news event, a school issue, or a recent movie can create a good beginning, especially if you convey personal interest. Good language skills are modeled when you ask questions, listen carefully, and give clear responses.

If your student's attention flags midway in the session, take a break and work on something fun. Some possibilities are: creating a dictionary of local slang, playing word games for 10 minutes, or exchanging stories about something that happened. Each of you might write a short poem or reflection on the same subject to read aloud, reinforcing the connection between reading and writing.

Sleepy? Wake up with a short walk outdoors or down the hall, where you can build a conversation around a topic that your student chooses. Asking about favorites often unleashes opinions (favorite movies, hangouts, CDs, or types of music). Following up with open-ended questions, such as "What do you like (or think) about ... ?" spurs students to use their language skills to support their opinions.

What choices can you give students?

Teenagers who have disengaged from learning often feel they lack control over their lives. This is especially true for students who have negative attitudes toward reading. Ask your student to bring in any reading he likes to peruse, whether a catalog, comic book, or magazine. He can choose a time in each session for reading this material, and also choose whether he wants to read to you or have you read to him. Allowing students control and choice in reading material helps them relate to the topic and find pleasure in the written word.

Seek the help of librarians and teachers to find high-interest books that are appropriate to your students' ages and skills. Also seek books that encourage readers to enter the experience and perspective of others, including all fiction genres: horror stories, fantasy, science fiction, or romance. Topical magazines will appeal to students' individual interests (e.g., race cars, fashion, bodybuilding). Comic books can motivate less proficient readers with colorful and creative artwork.

What strategies encourage independence and engagement?

Your most difficult challenge may be to instill in your students a sense of their own reading power and autonomy. Many discouraged readers feel that reading is nothing more than a search for the "correct" meaning or ability to answer the questions at the end. The text is in control, the student is the passive recipient, trying to figure out someone else's meaning.

In Literature as Exploration, Louise Rosenblatt describes reading as a "transaction," maintaining that young readers must feel free to react to what they read in order to find meaning in the text. Each young person brings "personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physical condition" to reading.

How can students become active players in their reading transaction? You might ask her what she sees, feels, thinks, or remembers as she reads. Encourage her to relate her reading to her own experience, or to that of others. Sharing your reactions and experience can establish a lively conversation. Other modes, such as a drawing or music, allow students creative opportunities to express personal connections between life and literature.

What connections will make reading matter?

Resistant adolescent readers often do admit that literacy skills can be useful in helping to understand or solve real-life problems. They may suspect this is true for other people but have no idea how it applies to them.

As a first step, help your student distinguish between two kinds of reading: reading for information (e.g., job notices in the newspaper) and reading for the vicarious "living through" experience of a novel or story.

Next, focus on useful reading by going over an article from a newspaper on a provocative topic that affects your student. Discuss possible responses to the article and help him follow up by: writing an article or a letter to the editor, making a phone call or a speech, or collecting a photo essay. Don't forget the creative and personal: poems, song lyrics, drawings, and sculptures. Bring in examples of music, poetry, artwork, or cartoons that express a response to a current event.

If a student is looking for a job, use the classifieds to make a list of contacts. You might collaborate on a letter of application and a resume, and role-play in a job interview. Experiencing the payoff of good literacy skills in the outside world can spark an adolescent's desire to become an active reader and writer.

Can you model your own enthusiasm?

Though every family has its own literacy traditions, some reluctant adolescent readers missed having adults read to them as children. They may also have lacked books or magazines at home.

To fill this gap, think of ways you can model your own love of language. What personal reading material can you share in the tutoring session? You might discuss your own reading habits, or talk about where words come from, and how they change through time. Working together on puzzles or word games can also enliven a session.

Does your learner show interest in diverse cultures? Then you might focus on the oral tradition of literature by playing a recording of an African American or Native American storyteller. There are many variations of oral, dramatic, and visual language, such as Indonesian puppetry or Chinese Kabuki theater. And, of course, you can always discuss the language of popular movies and music.

What outside resources might help?

Once you know your student's interests, look for a variety of resource materials that promote reading for information and pleasure. Try collecting flyers for musical groups, photographs with text, or short newspaper items. If your student reads magazines, or might like a particular one, you can find a copy, bring it to the session, read an article together, and give the student the magazine.

If you're tutoring a student in a particular subject, various sources will help her understand the topic, from National Geographic to websites on the Internet. Linking new knowledge to a familiar idea helps a student integrate reading content.

How can you build confidence and pride?

Maintaining a portfolio of your student's work can be a confidence builder. Students can contribute poetry, stories, song lyrics, and journal entries-anything that represents effort and progress. Contribute your own thoughts by adding margin notes of encouragement or writing your student a letter.

Student portfolios are often used to document developing skills, new knowledge, and broadening interests, and are a creative representation of the tutoring relationship. Keep the portfolio or journal until the tutoring year is over. Then, you might present it with a special card, or make a gift of a new journal or binder to encourage continued practice.

How can conversation develop literacy skills?

Talking can be a powerful tool of self-discovery for a teenager, especially with a sympathetic listener. Many young people with reading difficulties simply haven't had enough experience using words to express their ideas and points of view. (According to some researchers, students spend, on average, three hours in a school day sitting passively while their teachers talk.) Conversing may be difficult at first, because adolescents are often uncomfortable with an adult they don't know well, especially those perceived as authority figures.

If conversations are a structured part of each tutoring session, barriers will gradually break down. You might schedule five minutes at the beginning devoted to an agreed-upon subject or a casual question such as, "How was the concert last week?" Open-ended questions that require more than a "yes" or "no" answer are the best conversation boosters. During these conversations, you will be able to convey the pleasure of talk while staying alert for opportunities to teach literacy skills, such as creative language use and articulation of meaning. Good eye contact, positive posture, and an interested expression may encourage your students to ask you questions.

A big help to reluctant learners is the constant reminder that in spoken language, there is no "correct" or "incorrect" English, only language adapted to different situations. Use the analogy of clothing to demonstrate the point. What one wears to school is determined by certain social and school rules (e.g., standard English), and may be very different from what one wears to a sporting event (e.g., nonstandard English).

Are there ways to connect reading and writing?

Because reading and writing skills develop together, an adolescent with trouble reading will often have trouble writing. A literacy- rich tutoring environment can suggest various strategies to encourage writing. Again, you can begin with your student's interests. If he is involved with grandparents or older relatives, consider an oral history project. Work together on a set of written questions for a taped interview. When you both listen to the interview, look for other ways to transform spoken language to written materials. You might transcribe the tape and make a booklet with text and photographs that your student can give to family members.

Do cultural differences require special sensitivity?

If you are tutoring an English-language learner, take time to learn about your student's culture. News clippings or magazine articles about the "home" country might open up a desire to communicate. Ask the student to teach you a few words of her language and incorporate them into each session.

Or you might share some music from her country, and then she could translate the lyrics for you. Consider working together on a version in English or translating the lyrics of an English song into her language. Explore every opportunity to bridge cultures. Librarians can help you select reading and other materials that dispel stereotypes, support the development of healthy self-esteem, reinforce cultural identity, and promote a sense of inclusion.

How can you incorporate reading aloud in tutoring sessions?

Many reluctant readers actually enjoy reading aloud, especially in a setting away from the classroom and their peers. An action-packed story read aloud can be riveting for the listener. Reading aloud can also help an underprepared reader direct his energy and focus his attention in a tutoring session.

Give your student the choice to either read aloud to you, or have you read to him, or take turns. Encourage your student to stop the reading at any point and discuss the story. What would he do if he were in this situation? How would he change the story? What will happen next? By inserting one's self into the text, a reader begins to experience the wonder of an alternative world. Reading a to-be-continued story promotes a sense of accomplishment as your student experiences the progress made each session.

Just as children love to hear their favorite stories again and again, older readers may benefit from hearing a story, poem, or particular passage more than once. Emphasize that rereading a text is an integral part of learning for everyone. It not only helps one better understand the text, but also allows time for savoring the details and considering larger issues.

How can you focus on the positive?

Since you are not responsible for testing or giving grades, you can be encouraging and positive about a student's efforts. If you recognize specific skill development -good thinking, creativity, tone, rhythm -praise will help reinforce further development. Just remember that adolescents won't welcome inappropriate, excessive, or false praise. You might notice when he arrives on time, remark that you enjoyed your last conversation, say you've been thinking about what he said, or find an article that supports her point of view. These interactions will create a positive, trusting, and meaningful tutoring relationship.

Evaluating skills and measuring progress are always important, but you can encourage your student to examine her own work, critique strengths and weaknesses, and set goals for improvement. Progress will be visible if you use the portfolio to keep a record of skill development and goals. When goals have been achieved, such as the number of books read, what interesting rewards or celebrations can you plan?

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How can you motivate adolescents who have never turned on to the magic of reading? Tutoring teenagers is as much about building self-confidence as teaching skills. Low self-image and feelings of powerlessness trouble many unmotivated adolescents.

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The challenge of motivating teenage boys to read is getting them to read again. During the early years, boys read as much as girls do, however as they attract more distractions they gradually lose interest in reading. The article committed a number of reasons boys might avoid reading and how to combat those reasons by providing alternative pathways.

Bevilacqua, K. (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://gettingboystoread.com/content/motivating-teenage-boys-read/

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How can we Motivate - Struggling Latino Students to read?

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How can we Motivate - Struggling Latino Students to read?

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This article provides insightful information on Latino/a students who might be struggling to read at school. 4 students were interviewed and they provide helpful tips on what can help them stay motivated in class.

Herzig, L. (n.d.). How can we Motivate Struggling Latino Adolescents to Read. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://padletuploads.blob.core.windows.net/prod/205907630/6b0c59af1018c9391cba5ff2403ffed7/Herzig_Motivation.pdf.

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Study on Motivation to get Employees Moving

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Study on Motivation to get Employees Moving

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This study is for future use once I pursue higher roles in education. The study examine the factors that might be affecting Employees motivation levels and it provides motivational theories that could help employees stay motivated.

A Study of Motivation: How to Get Your Employees Moving. (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://spea.indiana.edu/doc/undergraduate/ugrd_thesis2012_mgmt_burton.pdf.

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6 tips for helping your child improve Reading Comprehension

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6 tips for helping your child improve Reading Comprehension

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This article offers six concise methods in helping a child improve reading comprehension while providing a brief elaboration of each. And example will be Asking questions, making connections, but my biggest take away is readers monitoring their own comprehension by, Re-reading, read-on, reading out aloud, reading more slowly, looking at illustrations and identifying confusing words.

Osewalt, G. (n.d.). 6 Tips for Helping Your Child Improve Reading Comprehension. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/partnering-with-childs-school/instructional-strategies/6-tips-for-helping-your-child-improve-reading-comprehension

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What helps kids understand what they read? Being an active reader is key. That means focusing on the text, questioning it, and taking mental notes. You can work on these skills with your child at home. Use these seven tips to help improve your child's reading comprehension.

1. Make connections.

When kids connect what they already know to what they read, it helps them focus. Show your child how to make connections when you read aloud. If a book mentions places you've been to with your child, talk about those memories. Then have your child give it a try.

2. Ask questions.

Asking questions encourages kids to look for clues in the text. When you read together, ask questions to spark your child's curiosity. Ask things like "What do you think will happen?" or "How is that character feeling?"

3. Make "mind movies."

Visualizing helps bring a story to life. That's where mind movies come in. When you read with your child, describe what the scene looks like in your head. Talk about how it makes you feel. You can use other senses, too. For example, if the scene takes place outside, what does it smell like?

Then invite your child to make a mind movie, too. Point out how your child's movie is different from yours. If your child likes to draw or color, encourage your child to make a picture of the scene, too.

4. Look for clues.

When you combine what you already know with clues from a story, you can make guesses or predictions. These are inferences. And making them is a great way to build reading comprehension.

For example, when we read "Kim's eyes were red and her nose was runny," we can infer that Kim has a cold or allergies. Help your child do this as you read. If a character is wearing gym clothes and sweating, ask your child what the character might have been doing before.

5. Figure out what's important.

Ask your child: Who are the main characters? What's the most important thing that has happened in the story so far? What problem are the characters trying to solve? When kids can point out what's important, they're more likely to understand what they read.

Your child can also use a tool called a graphic organizer to do this. A "story element" organizer keeps track of the main characters, where the story is taking place, and the problem and solution of the story.

6. Check understanding.

It helps to encourage kids to stop and ask themselves, "Is this making sense?" If your child gets stuck, suggest rereading the part that didn't make sense. What about it was confusing? Were there specific words that tripped your child up?

7. Try new things.

The more kids know about the world, the more they can get meaning out of what they read. You don't have to take an expensive trip or go to a museum to do this, though. You can expand kids' background knowledge and vocabulary in lots of ways.

Shooting hoops or watching a baseball game can help your child connect more with books about sports. Riding the subway might make your child interested in books that take place in big cities.

Even with these tips, some kids still have a hard time understanding what they read. Learn more about how to help your child with reading. And get an expert's take on why kids may have trouble understanding or remembering what they read.

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7 tips to help kids understand what they read

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How can you help your child improve reading comprehension? Here are tips to help kids better understand what they read.

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The article explains how reading comprehension comes from developing a set of skills distinct from phonic :word decoding" skills. Reading comprehension skills separate the passive unskilled readers from the active readers.

T. (2016, November 07). Learning Reading Comprehension Skills Online. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.time4learning.com/readingpyramid/comprehension.htm

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Reading comprehension is one of the pillars of good reading. Just as a building needs a strong foundation, a reader needs five specific pillars of reading skills to support his or her success. The five pillars of the reading skills pyramid are:

Once a reader starts interacting with text (awareness and decoding), he or she will move to reading for understanding (comprehension). Effective reading comprehension programs teach young readers how to do more than decode. They use interactive tools that engage and challenge them, laying a solid foundation for building reading comprehension.

What Is Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension is being able to accurately read text, decode it, and understand the meaning. In other words, it means how well you understand what you are reading. It is what separates the "passive," unskilled reader from the "active" reader. Skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. To help a beginning reader understand this concept, you might explain that interactive reading comprehension involves the internal discussion the reader has with himself/herself while reading.

Skilled readers, for instance:

1. Predict what will happen next in a story using clues presented in text

2. Create questions about the main idea, message, or plot of the text

3. Monitor understanding of the sequence, context, or characters

4. Clarify parts of the text which have confused them

5. Connect the events in the text to prior knowledge or experience

How to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills

When parents are searching for online reading comprehension programs, they should focus heavily on those that build skills incrementally. Much like learning to drive, reading comprehension is taught piece by piece until the skill becomes automatic. The key to teaching reading comprehension is developing the habit of "interacting" with the text and monitoring one's understanding while reading.

By "learning to read", most parents mean that the child is decoding words. But understanding what you read-"reading comprehension"-requires that a student understand how to decode words and how to:

Make sense of new vocabulary in context

Use prediction to anticipate what's coming next in a piece of writing

Ask questions that bring better understanding to the text

Visualize what's happening or what's being conveyed

Re-read sections that are confusing

Summarize what they have just read

These skills can begin to be taught even before children begin reading for themselves. Parents and early teachers can initiate the process of reading comprehension while reading to them and asking them questions about what they're hearing.

Reading Comprehension Curriculum

Reading comprehension skills development is an integral part of a complete language arts program. With Time4Learning, these reading comprehension skills are taught and reinforced in a number of ways. Our reading comprehension lessons guide students toward:

Explaining how to using the title of a piece to build ideas about what the focus of the text will be

Using prior knowledge of a subject to enhance comprehension

Confirming, modifying, or refining their predictions as they begin to read

Distinguishing the main idea in a paragraph or essay from the supporting details

Noting any confusing vocabulary and making assumptions about their meaning

Recognizing when they are not adequately comprehending what they are reading

Returning to any problematic passages to gain further understanding

Time4Learning offers online reading comprehension exercises that help students understand the strategy used by skilled readers to approach, read, and interpret text. The software introduces a theme by having an interactive and animated exercise teach the vocabulary and subject matter. Then the comprehension software will present a story. For younger students, the passage is read to them as they follow along with the text. This approach works both for families who need supplemental reading support for a struggling student or simply need a solid homeschool reading comprehension curriculum.

Additional Reading Resources

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A good reading comprehension program will help your children become successful readers by ensuring they are grasping the meaning of what they're reading.. Improve your child's reading comprehension skills with fun, online, interactive lessons!

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The comprehension matrix demonstrates the factors that help children comprehend. It provides helpful activities that could be applied before reading, during reading, and after reading.

Gill, S. R. (2008). The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction. The Reading Teacher, 62(2), 106-113. doi:10.1598/rt.62.2.2

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Reading Comprehension Instructions for Adolescents with Learning Disability

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Reading Comprehension Instructions for Adolescents with Learning Disability

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This article focuses on children with learning disability. The journal support the usage of narrative texts with children with learning Disability rather than the usual expository text methods.

Ko, T., & Hughes, M. T. (2015). Reading Comprehension Instruction for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: A Reality Check. Education Sciences, 5(4), 413-439. doi:10.3390/educsci5040413

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Reading Comprehension Instruction for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: A Reality Check

Academy for Urban School Leadership, 3400 N Austin Avenue, Chicago, IL 60634, USA

Department of Special Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; Tel.: +1-773-517-3874.

Academic Editor: James Albright

Received: 23 October 2015 / Accepted: 15 December 2015 / Published: 18 December 2015

special education; learning disabilities; reading; comprehension

1. Introduction

Students with learning disabilities (LD) face an extraordinary set of challenges as they transition to secondary school where content is emphasized and adequate literacy skills are assumed by many content area teachers [ 1]. In many secondary level content area classrooms in the United States (US), teachers typically expect students to learn the content primarily through the reading of expository text [ 2]. Given that many students with LD find these expository texts more difficult to comprehend than narrative texts, learning from these content area texts poses a significant challenge for students with LD who already have reading difficulties. With each grade level, students with LD are presented with thicker and more complex text [ 3] that have readability levels at or above grade level [ 4]. This in turn leads to an ever-increasing discrepancy between the reading level of the students with LD and the readability of the text [ 4]. Therefore, students' achievement in secondary classes is greatly impacted, since students' ability to comprehend a range of complex texts is highly correlated with academic success [ 5]. Compounding the difficulties posed by accessing these texts, students with LD also experience other academic challenges, including: (1) higher rates of absenteeism; (2) lower grade point averages; (3) higher rates of course failure; (4) lower self-esteem; and (5) higher rates of inappropriate behavior all which impact their academic achievement and motivation to excel [ 6].

In the US, students with LD comprise over 40% of all students receiving special education services [ 7] with a significant number of adolescents with LD experiencing difficulty comprehending what they need to read in their classes. Research suggests that this difficulty may be due to difficulties in several areas, including: (a) general background knowledge; (b) knowledge of common text structures, such as narrative and expository texts; (c) vocabulary knowledge; (d) reading fluency; and (e) task persistence [ 8]. An alternative perspective argues that these challenges are more accurately described by inefficiency rather than deficiency, meaning that although students with LD possess the required cognitive tools to process information, they tend to do so very inefficiently [ 8]. Many students with LD lack the information-processing skills required to comprehend complex text [ 9]; thus it is theorized that this breakdown occurs during strategic processing and metacognition [ 4].

Reading comprehension requires the ability to decode words, read fluently, and use active strategies to understand the meaning of printed text [ 10]. Successful readers monitor their comprehension while they read, allowing them to make connections to prior learning and activate fix-up strategies when their comprehension breaks down [ 11]. Many students with LD, however, are believed to be inactive readers who may lack the metacognitive skills that their proficient reading peers have [ 4]. Therefore, most students with LD require academic literacy instruction throughout secondary school to successfully read required texts [ 12, 13] with research showing that when these students are provided with explicit instruction and practice in reading, they can improve their independent reading and comprehension of text [ 14].

The relationship between reading comprehension and reading disability has been debated for over a century and current research suggests that this relationship is more complex than previously thought [ 15]. Several models have been proposed to fully explain the construct, including cognitive-processing models, socio-cognitive models, and transactional models. In Rumelhart's [ 16] cognitive-based model, the interactive model of reading, the reader considers information from several sources simultaneously to construct meaning from text. This model suggests that when information from one source is deficient, the reader relies on another, stronger source. Lipson and Wixson [ 17] later extended this model to design the interactive model of reading disability. This model places comprehension at the intersection of text, reader, and context, and argues that the reader is only temporarily affected by the disability, given a specific text, task, or situation. From this perspective, reading difficulties lie in the instructional context rather than within the reader, underscoring the role of the teacher. This model has been validated by others who suggest that "the ability to comprehend written texts is not a static or fixed ability, but rather one that involves a dynamic relationship between the demands of texts and the prior knowledge and goals of the reader" [ 18] (p. 3).

1.1. Reading Comprehension Instruction

Over the past few decades, a significant number of studies designed to identify evidence-based practices in reading comprehension instruction for students with LD have been published, including literature reviews, research syntheses, and meta-analyses [ 8, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. This body of work has significantly improved our understanding of the most effective instructional components, as well as techniques for teaching adolescent students with LD to comprehend what they read across content areas [ 26, 27]. In particular, we know that adolescence is not too late to intervene and that older, struggling readers, including those with LD, benefit from interventions [ 28]. A number of promising practices have been found to be quite effective for students with disabilities in secondary schools [ 29]. We know that comprehension can in fact be taught, and that vocabulary and comprehension strategy instruction is effective for students [ 21, 23, 30]. The ability to determine what strategies to use and when is characteristic of good readers and can help challenging readers [ 31]. For expository text, high effect sizes have been found for content enhancements and structured cognitive strategies. These tools enable students with LD to compensate for the information-processing challenges they experience.

Some of the most effective content enhancements for content area comprehension have been graphic organizers or semantic feature analyses and mnemonic illustrations [ 20]. Cognitive strategies have also been very effective for improving reading comprehension for students with LD. A cognitive strategy is a "mental routine or procedure for accomplishing a cognitive goal" [ 32] (p. 347). Cognitive strategy instruction emphasizes teaching students how to learn rather than mastering content. Although several single strategies such as identifying main ideas or developing main idea sentences through paraphrasing or summarizing have had positive outcomes (mean ES = 2.56, SD = 1.09, n = 6), larger effect sizes have been associated with instruction involving multiple strategies [ 20]. Another effective approach to comprehension instruction is to teach the strategies that "good readers" use [ 33]. These include: (a) reading words rapidly and accurately; (b) noting the structure and organization of text; (c) monitoring understanding while reading; (d) using summaries; (e) making, checking, revising, and evaluating predictions; (f) integrating prior knowledge with new learning; and (g) making inferences and using visualization [ 34].

Perhaps the most widely cited approach for improving the reading comprehension for struggling adolescent readers, however, is comprehension instruction that is direct, explicit and strategic [ 20, 28, 35, 36, 37, 38]. Explicit comprehension instruction includes a direct explanation of the strategy, teacher modeling, guided practice, and independent application [ 39]. Explicit comprehension strategy instruction teaches students how to actively monitor their understanding of text during and after reading through questioning and reflecting [ 40].

Collectively, this research demonstrates that a variety of individual and multiple strategies and instructional components are highly effective for improving reading comprehension for students with LD. This same research, however, also indicates that it is not the particular strategy or method as much as it is the teacher's use of the practice that makes it effective [ 22]. It is imperative, therefore, that teachers are knowledgeable about evidence-based reading interventions and implement them "accurately, consistently, and intensively" so as to enhance reading comprehension for students with LD [ 41] (p. 2).

1.2. Purpose of Study

The experiences of struggling adolescent readers with LD, coupled with what we know about the literacy demands of secondary school, reveal the magnitude of the problem and emphasize the importance of providing intensive, explicit, evidence-based reading comprehension instruction in secondary school classrooms. Despite the reality that the majority of secondary students require some form of reading support [ 35], reading instruction is not typically provided at the secondary level in the US [ 36]. In secondary schools, "the responsibility for teaching reading and writing often seems to belong to no one in particular" [ 42] (p. 15) and instruction generally moves forward regardless of whether or not students have mastered the material [ 6]. Although reading comprehension instruction can improve students' retention and understanding of the domain-specific information in secondary content-area classrooms [ 42, 43], secondary teachers report that they are not adequately prepared to teach reading instruction at this level [ 44].

Previous research on reading instruction for students with LD has focused heavily on elementary resource rooms [ 45]. For decades, the resource room has been the primary setting for special education for students with LD [ 46]. Observation research has consistently deemed the amount and quality of reading instruction inadequate for the populations served, citing little to no evidence of comprehension or strategy instruction [ 45]. Researchers have described this scenario as a disconnect between evidence-based reading instruction and what actually happens during reading instruction for students with LD [ 47]. In light of these results at the elementary level, surprisingly little is known about what reading instruction for students with LD looks like in secondary classrooms. In a synthesis of 21 observational studies on reading instruction [ 47], only two studies were conducted in secondary classrooms [ 48, 49].

Fortunately, reading research has identified a number of evidence-based reading interventions that have been beneficial for this population. The extent to which these practices have made their way into secondary classrooms, however, remains unclear. Swanson suggested, "As the field continues to identify essential components of reading instruction for students with LD, it will be important to document implementation in classrooms where students with LD are served. In other words, is what has been described in research making its way into classrooms?" [ 47] (p. 131).

Therefore, a study that extended previous research on reading instruction for students with LD to the secondary level in urban high schools was required. Thus, the purpose of this study was to document the reading comprehension instruction provided in US special education reading classrooms to adolescents with LD and identify the factors that influence instructional decisions. This study was guided by the following questions: (a) What reading comprehension instruction strategies, practices, and activities do special education teachers implement in special education reading classrooms for students with LD? (b) What factors do special education teachers state as influencing their use of the observed reading comprehension instruction strategies, practices, and activities?

2. Methods Section

2.1. Setting and Participants

The study was conducted in a large, urban school district in the US where almost 90% of the total population was identified as African American and/or Latino. Approximately 13% of the students had IEPs and over 54% of special education students were identified with LD [ 50]. Purposeful sampling was used to identify secondary schools that met the following criteria: (a) school population reflected the diversity of the district (at least 75% of the population was African American and/or Latino and over 80% was low income; and (b) a neighborhood school (rather than charter schools, magnet schools, or selective enrollment schools). The research occurred at six neighborhood high schools whose overall average student population was 951 (range = 370 to 2350) with an average of 18% of the students having an IEP (SD = 6.2). Across these six sites, 66% of the students were Latino and 30% were African American. The mean dropout rate was 6.7% (SD = 7.6) and the mean graduation rate was 74.4% (SD = 15.0).

All eligible teachers at each school participated in the study, which consisted of eight special education teachers, five of whom were female. All teachers held a Master's degree and a special education teaching certificate. Teachers averaged 10.8 years (SD = 8.3) of teaching experience and 4.4 years (SD = 4.5) teaching a reading course for special education students. None of the participants were certified to teach reading, although one teacher was currently working toward this certification. To maintain participant confidentiality, all teachers have been given a pseudonym. Additional information for each teacher is presented in Table 1.

All eight participants taught a reading class to ninth grade students with IEPs in a separate special education class setting. This reading course was offered as an elective that all ninth grade students (general or special education) in the district could select; however schools could decide on their own to make it a requirement for all students. In many cases, schools offered separate reading classes for general and special education students. Secondary students typically received 250 min of instruction per course per week in this reading course. Although available information on the details of this course was limited, a district document outlined the fundamental objectives across all grade levels in the core content areas in alignment with the Common Core State Standards for Reading and Language Arts. The learning targets for comprehension stated that "by the end of grade nine, students will: synthesize and analyze information using text features of supplementary text; analyze and explain author's use of specific literary devices to convey meaning in texts; infer the main idea and support with evidence from the text; infer an author's unstated meaning and draw conclusions about the author's purpose; interpret and evaluate text; compare and contrast information from multiple texts; and predict probable future outcomes supported by the text" [ 51] (p. 13). This document was the only guidance provided to schools and teachers about the course; thus it left each teacher with much flexibility regarding the focus and structure of the course.

2.2. Data Sources

2.2.1. Teacher and Class Profile

The Teacher and Class Profile was designed for this study to gather demographic data including teaching position, years of teaching experience, education history, certification, and disabilities/characteristics of students in the observed class. Additionally, the profile solicited information about the reading course including its purpose, the curriculum, and composition of the class. This form was shared with teachers once they agreed to participate in the study and was collected once prior to the first observation.

2.2.2. Lesson Profile

Teachers completed a Lesson Profile before each of the three scheduled observations. On this profile, teachers were reminded that each observed reading lesson should incorporate activities that include written text. The Lesson Profile called for teachers to identify important elements of the lesson to be observed, including lesson objectives, materials, text type, comprehension instruction practices, strategies and/or activities, and accommodations/modifications. Teachers were asked to submit the profile prior to the observation and the data gathered was used to familiarize the observer to what the lesson would consist of and also served as support for interviews. These were brief in nature and were not analyzed. In addition, due to a variety of circumstance teachers did not always follow the plan activities on the Lesson Profiles. A total of 24 Lesson Profiles were collected during the study.

2.2.3. Reading Comprehension Instruction Fieldnotes Template

Each teacher was observed three times teaching a lesson to the same class of students. The observations (n = 24) were scheduled ahead of time and lasted for a period, averaging 47 minutes (range = 35-65 min, SD = 7.2). The template was used to describe the instruction during each observation and encompassed both descriptive and reflective fieldnotes to document specific reading comprehension strategies, practices, and activities. Reading comprehension strategies are "specific procedures that guide students to become aware of how well they are comprehending" as they read written text [ 52]. For example, students may be taught how to generate and answer questions as they read as a way to monitor whether they comprehend the text. Reading comprehension practices and activities describe ways that teachers and/or students engage with text that may promote students' comprehension. The observer took continuous notes during the period of all the instruction that was happening in the class, paying particular attention to comprehension instruction, but noting any type of instruction. The template was divided into five-minute segments, which allowed the observer to note what instruction was occurring during each segment [ 53]. A silent timer was used as a prompt for the observer to move into the next section of the template after five minutes, which helped organized the notes into five-minute blocks.

Prior to starting the study, the researchers piloted the template during two separate reading lessons with ninth grade special education teachers. These observations served to establish interobserver agreement. Interobserver agreement was calculated by summing the number of agreements (when both observers recorded the presence/absence of instructional behaviors) and dividing them by the total number of agreements and disagreements. The average interobserver agreement for the pilot was 88% (range = 81%-95%). After each observation, the researchers compared fieldnotes to verify that the same practices were observed and recorded. In the event that the fieldnotes differed, observers discussed the differences and reached a consensus about how to best describe the instruction. Notes were adjusted accordingly.

2.2.4. Interview Guide

The researchers conducted three audio-recorded interviews with each teacher, one following each lesson observation and asked questions related to the instruction that was observed. The mean length of the interviews was 22 minutes (range = 8 to 40 min, SD = 8.6). Using the interview guide approach [ 54], topics were identified in advance of the interview and aligned to the variables of interest in the research questions (i.e., factors that influenced the comprehension instructional practices, strategies, and activities used in lesson). This approach was selected as it provided the interviewer with flexibility to explore a set of topics and was appropriate for illuminating particular situations observed during each lesson. Questions emerged from a review of literature on effective reading comprehension instruction practices for students with LD as well as a review of observational research on reading instruction in special education resource rooms. These questions were designed to elicit information about the factors that special education teachers identified as influencing their instructional decisions during the observed reading class.

Prior to the study, several special educators reviewed the interview guides to ensure that all items were open-ended and structured to elicit meanings and perspectives from the participants' points of view. Then the interviews were piloted with three special education teachers to refine the questions and check procedures. The interviews consisted of 11 prompts to guide the conversation about lesson that was observed. These ranged from obtaining teachers' perceptions of the lesson (e.g., How do you think this lesson went? Why? Do you think the students learned what you wanted them to learn? How do you know?) to more specific that focused on the instruction (e.g., What reading comprehension strategies did you teach during this lesson?; Were the reading strategies effective? How do you know? Tell me about why you decided to do [identify a specific strategy, practice or activity observed]). Although the interview guides had predetermined prompts, to the most extent possible, the researchers worked to "listen actively and ...move the interview forward as much as possible by building on what the participant has begun to share" [ 55] (p. 81).

2.3. Procedure

All data were collected over a two-month period during the fall semester with each teacher observed no more than once per week. After consenting to participate in the study, teachers were asked to identify the reading class to observe and shared the weekly schedule for that class. Participants then completed the Teacher and Class Profile for the selected reading class. Lesson observations were scheduled as agreed upon by the researcher and the teacher. Once scheduled, participants completed their Lesson Profiles prior to the observation. Each teacher was observed teaching the same reading class to the same group of students for the duration of the study.

On the day of the observation, the researcher entered the classroom during the passing period before the lesson and located a nondescript seat near the back of the room. The researcher collected data on the instruction that occurred during the observed lessons using the Reading Comprehension Instruction Fieldnotes Template. Once the lesson began, the time was recorded and a five-minute interval recording system was activated. Both descriptive and reflective fieldnotes were recorded to describe events as they unfolded in the classroom. The descriptive fieldnotes included descriptions of the classroom, teacher, students, and all instructional activities during the lesson. Because comprehension instruction was the focus of this study, direct quotations from the teacher regarding reading comprehension strategies, practices, and activities were also recorded. Descriptive fieldnotes were written to clearly describe the type of instruction that took place during each five-minute segment. The reflective fieldnotes included any personal feelings or reactions that arose during the observation, as well as any insights or interpretations about what was happening.

To further investigate the reading comprehension practices, teachers participated in an interview with the researcher following each observation. The purpose of the interview was to better understand teachers' instructional practices and decision making with regard to reading comprehension and the specific needs of their students with LD. During this time, teachers had an opportunity to illuminate the factors that influenced their instructional decisions to implement the observed reading comprehension instruction strategies, practices, and activities. All interviews were audio recorded to facilitate active listening and were later transcribed for data analysis. As compensation for participating in the study, teachers received $50, as well as a $200 store gift card for instructional materials upon completion of the final interview.

2.4. Data Analysis

In analyzing qualitative data, the researcher must examine, categorize, synthesize, conceptualize, search for patterns, and integrate the data with existing theories or form new theories [ 56]. Data analysis was guided by the work of Miles and Huberman [ 57] (p. 10) in which analysis consists of "three concurrent flows of activity: (1) data reduction; (2) data display; and (3) conclusion drawing/verification". During the first flow, codes were developed from the initial data. In the second flow, the information was organized into a visual display and conclusions can be drawn about patterns and themes across the data. Finally, in the third flow, the original data were reviewed in an effort to confirm or deny any theories, assertions or hunches that emerged during the process. Once the observation fieldnotes and interview audiotapes were transcribed, they were immediately imported into NVivo 9 and the process of initial coding began.

Member checking, the process of sharing data with participants to confirm if a description is complete and realistic [ 58] or that they are being accurately represented [ 59], were conducted. These checks can be formal or informal. In this study, the fieldnotes collected during the observation were summarized and shared with each teacher during the follow up interview. At this time, teachers were asked to confirm that the strategies, practices, and activities were accurately described. Similarly, at the end of each interview, participants were asked to confirm or amend any statements given during the interview. When provided with these opportunities, all teachers agreed with the accuracy of both the observation and interview data collected.

Because of the descriptive nature of this study, a theoretical framework was required to capture the multiple dimensions of reading comprehension instruction. Reading comprehension is an active and purposeful process that can be taught through explicit teaching and modeling of the strategies that good readers use. Data analysis occurred throughout the process of data collection and a coding system was developed to most effectively describe the reading comprehension instruction that emerged; regardless if the instruction aligned with best practices. Although these codes emerged from the data, many of the descriptions were modified from previous work [ 40, 52, 60, 61].

Although sensitizing concepts gleaned from the research framed this study, it quickly became clear that applying deductive "best practice" codes would restrict the data being collected, particularly because teachers were identifying and using practices and activities as comprehension instruction that may not be typically considered in the literature as comprehension instruction (independent seatwork, student and teacher read aloud). Therefore, descriptive coding was used to best capture not only reading comprehension strategies, but also comprehension practices and activities as they emerged, both within and across teachers, as the primary goal of descriptive coding is to help the reader "see what you saw", "know what you know", and "understand what you think you yourself have understood" [ 62] (p. 412). Descriptive coding was also applied to the transcribed interviews to capture influential factors as they emerged from the data. The data were analyzed using both within-case and cross-cases analysis.

The full fieldnotes were read and a coding scheme based on the strategies, practices, and activities related to reading comprehension as identified in the literature and by the teachers themselves was developed. All the observation field notes were reviewed, but data were only coded if it focused in some way to reading comprehension instruction as identified by researcher or the teacher. Given that a particular strategy, practice, or activity could range in duration during a class period, only one code identifying the category of comprehension instruction was assigned to each instructional strategy, practice, or activity observed during each five-minute segment, with the exception of questioning. Therefore in any given five minute block, one or multiple codes could be assigned depending on what was happening during that time. However, a particular code could only be used once during each time block. All eight teachers commonly implemented teacher-generated questions and questions were additionally coded by type-recall or inference; thus each question asked was coded individually. Once all observation data were coded, each five-minute segment was reviewed to identify if reading comprehension instruction was present and if present what types of reading comprehension strategies, practices or activities were implemented during that segment [ 53]. Interrater reliability data were collected on 25% of the observations and interviews. Interrater agreement for the observation data was 91% (range = 78%-100%) and for the interview data was 88% (range = 79%-100%).

3. Results

3.1. The Reading Classroom

Over the course of two months, a total of 1120 minutes of reading instruction were observed across eight self-contained special education reading classrooms in six urban high schools. Class periods averaged 47 minutes (range = 35-65 min, SD = 7.2), classes had an average of 7.5 students with disabilities (range = 5-14 students, SD = 2.9), and no general education students were enrolled in the class. Seventy percent of the 60 students were male, 63% (n = 38) of the students were African American, 32% (n = 19) were Latino, and 5% (n = 3) were white. In the observed classrooms, 90% (n = 54) of the students were identified with LD (M = 7, SD = 3.2) with the remaining students being identified having other disabilities. As identified by teachers, the reading abilities for students in the observed ninth grade classes ranged from non-readers to fifth grade level (see Table 2 for additional class demographics).

The classroom environments in which the observations were conducted also varied. Five of the eight classrooms were smaller in size than typical classrooms found in the schools. In four of the eight classrooms, students sat around one large table during instruction. In another three classrooms, students sat in traditional student desks. In the remaining class, students sat at small tables in groups of three to four. Three of the teachers taught only separate special education classes and taught in the same room all day. These three classrooms were decorated with classroom expectations, reading posters, and anchor charts and had small classroom libraries that students could select books from. The remaining five teachers, however, taught both special education and co-taught classes and moved from room to room throughout the school. Consequently, these five teachers shared their reading classrooms with other teachers. This shared space was evident in the variety of posters and student work that adorned the walls, representing several content areas, including reading, math, social studies, and science.

3.1.1. Purpose of Reading Class

All eight teachers taught the same ninth grade reading course. When teachers were asked to identify the purpose of this reading course, however, responses varied significantly. Three stated the primary focus as improving reading skills and strategies, and another three teachers identified improving students' reading fluency. One teacher indicated that the course was intended to "master the college readiness standards" and another stated that the purpose of the course was to "provide modified reading and writing instruction". Teachers also identified other purposes, including increasing students' reading vocabulary, strengthening students' metacognitive skills, and improving their grammar. Only one teacher additionally stated that the purpose of the reading course was to improve reading comprehension.

3.1.2. Lesson Objectives

Just as teachers identified different purposes for the reading class, lesson objectives also varied. A total of 52 lesson objectives were identified for the 24 observations. Teachers identified a single objective for nine of the lessons and multiple objectives were identified for the remaining 15 lessons. Of the 52 objectives, 73% (n = 38) were related to assisting students improve their comprehension of reading material. Of these objectives related to reading comprehension, the most frequently identified were vocabulary development (n = 6), identifying supporting details (n = 6), character development (n = 5), and identifying the main idea (n = 5). Additional comprehension objectives were devoted to previewing the text, making predictions, identifying the purpose, sequencing events, determining the cause and effect, and identifying question types. The remaining 14 objectives did not relate to comprehension instruction and instead focused on grammar, fluency, and writing.

Two teachers maintained the same lesson objectives throughout the study. John, for example, identified the following objectives for all three lessons, stating that his students would be able to: "gain appreciable reading fluency and comprehension, gain appreciable vocabulary knowledge, and gain insight on particular details in passages". Miguel also identified the same objectives for all three of his lessons, stating that his students would be able to: "identify the main idea of a passage, identify supporting details of a passage, and have a better understanding of meanings of words". Similarly, Ethan identified the same objective for his last two lessons, stating that his students would be able to "determine cause and effect and extract the main idea from a fictional passage". All other teachers, however, identified different objectives for each lesson.

During each observation, notations were made to indicate if the instruction included at least one strategy, practice, and/or activity to assist students in meeting the lesson objectives outlined by the teacher. In all the lessons there was a part of the instruction that appeared to focus on at least one the identified lesson objectives. For example, Angela identified the following objective for her first lesson: "Students will be able to use dialogue to identify character traits". During this lesson, students read a short passage, selected a character, and highlighted their character's dialogue. They then selected and analyzed four quotes to determine the best trait to describe their character. In nine of the lessons, although the objectives were worded "students will be able to", instruction was primarily teacher-centered and students did not actively engage in the strategies, practices, and/or activities related to the lesson objective. For example, five objectives stated that students would be able to identify the main idea of a passage. However, students were never observed being taught how to identify the main idea, nor were they explicitly asked to identify the main idea. Instead, teachers summarized reading sections for their students or asked students to recall facts directly from the text. Similarly, six objectives stated that students would be able to increase their vocabulary. However, instruction during these lessons predominantly consisted of student read aloud. When students stumbled over a word, the teacher stated the correct pronunciation and occasionally provided students with a brief verbal definition or example. Students were not instructed to interact with these vocabulary words beyond listening. Two of the lesson objectives identified in the Lesson Profiles were not incorporated into classroom instruction: one objective related to exploring the author's purpose and the other related to comparing and contrasting characters. In general, it was noted that the stated objectives of a lesson and the practices, activities, or strategies implemented in class showed no relationship to each other with teachers typically using very general practices, such as reading aloud, for a variety of objectives.

3.1.3. Texts

The types of texts read during these lessons also varied. Texts included novels (e.g., House on Mango Street, Call of the Wild), plays and screenplays (e.g., Romeo and Juliet), short stories (e.g., "Thank You, Ma'am"), graphic novels (e.g., Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet), magazines for adolescent readers (e.g., Reading Advantage Motions Magazine), and reading passages from standardized tests (e.g., ACT). Of the 24 lessons, narrative texts only were read in 17 and expository texts only were read in three. In two of the lessons, both narrative and expository texts were read. The remaining two lessons focused exclusively on grammar and the text in use was related to the grammar activity. In one lesson students were provided with worksheets; in the other students were given a printed copy of a PowerPoint presentation.

3.2. Reading Comprehension Instruction

Although all the comprehension instruction observed did not represent "best practices", if teachers indicated it as a means they used to enhance students' comprehension it was classified as a comprehension practice or activity, regardless of quality of instruction. Thus, reading comprehension instruction strategies, practices, and activities were observed being implemented at least once during 83% of the five-minute segments across lessons. Teachers were observed using 13 different types of reading comprehension strategies, practices, and activities including reading aloud, questioning, and activating prior knowledge. During the remaining 17% of the segments, however, reading comprehension instruction was not observed. Instead, this class time was devoted to transitioning, behavior management, and non-comprehension related assignments. All observed practices fit into these 13 categories with no other comprehension practices observed. Table 3 presents a breakdown of the frequency of each reading comprehension strategy, practice, and activity. These percentages reflect the frequency of each category of the total reading comprehension instruction observed during the 161 segments across all 21 lessons in which comprehension instruction was implemented. The most frequent activity or practice observed was reading text aloud (14% students reading; 12% teacher reading) was and comprised 26% of the total comprehension instructional practices observed. Independent seatwork (16%) were also common practices in these classrooms, which indicated that 42% of the comprehension practices and activities observed where not necessarily typically evidence-based comprehension instruction. The practice of questioning (13%) and activating prior knowledge represented 10% of the reading comprehension instruction were the next common practices. Other practices observed included using graphic organizers, summarizing, and annotating. A description and classroom examples of these categories follow.

3.2.1. Reading Aloud

Reading text aloud represented 26% of the comprehension instruction observed, making it the practice that was observed the most during comprehension instruction. Both the teacher and students were observed reading aloud. Student read aloud accounted for 14% of the comprehension instruction observed. Six teachers used the practice and individually selected students to read aloud in 11 of the 21 lessons. During student read aloud, all students and the teacher had access to the same text, and one student read aloud to the whole class while other students either followed along in the text or engaged in other non-instructional activities including sleeping, talking with each other, and doing work for other classes, often times with their books closed. Students read aloud until the teacher selected another reader or interrupted the reader to ask questions or to summarize the text.

Teachers also participated in reading aloud, accounting for 12% of the reading comprehension instruction observed. This practice was observed in 17 lessons and all eight teachers were observed reading aloud at least once. Most of the time, both teachers and students had the text in front of them. However, during three observations, only the teacher had access to the text. Additionally, while teachers read text aloud, students were not typically accountable for participating in the lessons and engaged in the same behaviors as when students read aloud. Rachel, for example, spent 15 minutes of one lesson reading aloud the first chapter of Schooled to the whole class. Her students did not have access to the text while she read and were instructed only to listen to the story. While Rachel read aloud, four students had their heads on their desks. After she finished reading the chapter, students were prompted to record three things they liked or disliked. Similarly, Miguel concluded two of his lessons by reading a chapter aloud from Freedom: Credos from the Road. During this time, Miguel was the only one with a book and his students were asked to just listen as he read aloud.

3.2.2. Independent Seatwork

Another commonly observed reading comprehension practice was for teachers to assign independent reading comprehension seatwork. Independent seatwork represented 16% of the reading comprehension instruction; it was assigned by five teachers and observed in 12 lessons. Independent seatwork described the practice of providing students with reading comprehension passages and/or worksheets to complete independently. Some of these assignments asked students questions about the text, and included open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Rebecca, John, and Miguel assigned independent seatwork in all three of their lessons. John's students, for example, completed a worksheet following a read aloud of Call of the Wild and "Thank You, Ma'am", in which students were asked to write about the concern, audience, purpose, tone, main idea, and supporting details. Another form of independent seatwork was observed in Ethan's class where students worked independently on computers. They accessed the Achieve 3000 program and completed a pre-assessment, read a short passage about Dred Scott, and answered several multiple-choice questions about the passage. Additionally, students were prompted to provide a written response and complete a word search. During this lesson, Ethan circulated the classroom and assisted students as needed. Although this program is designed to provide students with differentiated passages based on their reading level, all five students were provided with the same passage and the same questions.

The function of independent seatwork appeared to be a means of checking students' comprehension of what was read. However, this practice was typically observed toward the end of the lesson and often finished when the bell rang, signaling the end of class. Teachers either collected the worksheets or asked students to place their work in their binders. Rebecca was the only teacher who asked her students to share out after completing independent seatwork: "Ok. Let's stop here. Look at your responses. Discuss with your group mates what you have. Share your responses. You can even look back in the book."

3.2.3. Questioning

Teacher questioning was another common practice that was naturally integrated into both teacher read aloud and student read aloud. Questioning described teacher-generated questions that were asked during or after reading and that related specifically to the content of the text being read. Questioning represented 13% of the reading comprehension instruction. Similar to teacher read aloud, the practice of questioning was used by all eight teachers and observed in 16 lessons. Of these questions, 57% were devoted to recall. Recall questions were low-level and asked students to recall factual and literal information directly from the text. All eight teachers asked recall questions. Students were often asked recall questions while the teacher or students were reading aloud such as "Who is this about?" "What time of day is it?" and "What happened at the end?" Similarly, questions prompting students to recall information were also asked after reading. John, for example, asked the following recall questions after reading Last of the Mohicans: "What year did this story take place?" "Who are Chingacook and Uncas?" and "What is the nation that the Indians are fighting?"

The remaining 43% of the questioning required students to make inferences. Seven teachers were observed asking students to make inferences and this practice occurred during 11 lessons. Inference questions observed were higher-level questions that asked students to draw conclusions by relating textual evidence to the reader's prior knowledge. Examples of inference questions asked included "How do you think the boys feel about the flashlight?" "What does this tell us about the character's interests?" and "What do you think is important to her?" Angela devoted the majority of her first lesson to asking students to make inferences about characters. During this lesson, students read a scene from the screenplay of "The Breakfast Club". After selecting a character and highlighting all of their lines from the dialogue, students selected four quotes and were prompted to identify character traits to describe each quote. Throughout the lesson, Angela asked her students questions such as "What does this statement tell us about Andrew?" "Why would he say this to Bender?" and "What can we infer about him using all of those big vocabulary words?"

3.2.4. Activating Prior Knowledge

In addition to questioning, all teachers implemented strategies, practices, and activities to activate students' prior knowledge. The practice of activating prior knowledge accounted for 10% of the reading comprehension instruction observed. This practice occurred when the teacher instructed students to draw on their own experience or knowledge of a topic or situation. Activities designed to activate students' prior knowledge were implemented at the beginning of lessons and were often labeled as a "Bell Ringer" or "Do Now". These activities were typically short (5-10 minutes in length) and prompted students to relate current learning to what they already know. Sometimes teachers activated students' prior knowledge by having them recall previously learned material. Examples of these prompts included "What do we know so far about [topic]?" "What did you think of the story yesterday?" "What was the most important event in chapter 16?" At other times, teachers engaged students in the lesson by having them make a personal connection with what they were reading. For example, before starting a new book in the Bluford series, Rachel held the book up and asked, "How many of you have read this book?" "What do you know about these books?" and "How do you think these characters are like us?"

3.2.5. Graphic Organizers

The use of graphic organizers comprised 9% of the reading comprehension instruction observed. Graphic organizers were used by four of the teachers and observed in seven lessons. During these lessons, students were given an average of 20 minutes to complete their graphic organizers. Graphic organizers assisted students in organizing concepts from text into a graphic representation. A total of six different graphic organizers were used. Types of graphic organizers used included T-charts, plot diagrams, character charts, and prediction charts. In three of the lessons, the graphic organizers used were pre-made and students completed them before, during, and after reading. In the only lesson in which an activity focused on vocabulary, Cathy instructed her students to complete a graphic organizer on their own titled "Building Vocabulary: Predictions" from the Reading Advantage Student Journal. This organizer required students to select vocabulary words, predict definitions, and identify how the words were actually used in the text. In the remaining four lessons, the teacher instructed students to create their own graphic organizer. Angela, for example, provided her students with a large sheet of construction paper and guided them through the process of folding it to make six squares and writing the following labels in each of the squares: character traits, speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions, and looks. In pairs, students sorted quotes from specific characters into each of the categories. Finally, students used the information that they had organized to identify character traits. Ethan was the only teacher whose students were observed using the same graphic organizer across two lessons.

3.2.6. Summarizing

Summarizing was another reading comprehension practice implemented by seven of the teachers and observed in 13 lessons. This practice represented 7% of the reading comprehension instruction. Summarizing occurred when the teacher provided students with a verbal overview of a reading passage or identified the most important concepts or events in a text. Students were not explicitly asked to provide a summary of the text. However, teachers regularly summarized the text for students during reading with interjections such as "Ok. Here's what happened..." and "What he's saying is this..." During Ethan's first observation, he spent part of the lesson playing To Kill a Mockingbird on audio, stopping it seven times to summarize the scene or highlight important events for students, including identifying new characters, explaining what Atticus is afraid of, describing why Atticus told his children not to worry, and summarizing Scout's concern that a mob will hurt her father.

3.2.7. Annotating

Four teachers engaged students in the strategy of annotating text. This practice accounted for 5% of the reading comprehension instruction and was observed in six lessons. Annotating described when the teacher instructed students to actively engage with written text while reading by underlining, highlighting, circling, and taking notes. This process was used to encourage students to monitor their own comprehension as they read. All annotating occurred during student or teacher read aloud.

3.2.8. Other Reading Comprehension Instruction Observed

Other types of reading comprehension instruction were observed in the study. This instruction included strategies, practices, and activities that focused on previewing, predicting, story structure, setting a purpose, and question types. Together, these other types of instruction accounted for 14% of the reading comprehension observed with no category representing more than 4% of the instruction.

3.3. Factors that Influence Reading Comprehension Instruction

After each of the 24 lesson observations, teachers participated in an interview with the researcher to describe the factors that influenced their implementation of reading comprehension instruction. In reflecting on their lessons and elaborating on their instructional practices, teachers identified multiple factors that influenced their use of reading comprehension instruction. Specifically, teachers identified student, school, and personal influences (see Table 4). Not surprisingly, all teachers identified students' present level of performance as influencing their instruction. Teachers emphasized the importance of meeting students where they are at and delivering instruction at their students' level. Additionally, most teachers discussed the need to engage their students with instruction that was interesting and relevant to their lives.

Interests

Teachers state that their own personal preference or interest drives their instruction.

Preparation

Teachers explain their level of preparation to teach the reading course.

Defining reading comprehension instruction

Teachers discuss their own definition or description of what reading comprehension instruction is or includes.

Collaboration

Teachers work or plan with other special or general educators.

Directives

Teachers describe policies or procedures mandated by a department or by administration.

Learning standards

Teachers state that instruction is driven by state or national learning standards.

Test preparation

Teachers identify the importance of preparing students for an assessment (formative or summative).

IEPs

Teachers discuss the importance of student IEPs in planning and implementing instruction.

Present level of performance

Teachers describe their knowledge and understanding of her students' strengths (what they can do) and unique needs (academic, social, emotional, learning style, etc.).

Data collected from these interviews reveal much about the factors that special education teachers identified as influencing their implementation of reading comprehension instruction. Both similarities and differences emerged as teachers described theses influences. However, all eight teachers identified at least one personal, school, and student-related factor that influenced their instructional decisions. A common thread across all eight teachers was the important role that students' present level of performance had on the instruction they implemented. Teachers spoke about meeting student needs and providing students with opportunities to be successful. Additionally, teachers discussed the importance of ensuring that their instruction was relevant and engaging to students. Many teachers also reported that their instruction was heavily influenced by test preparation and national learning standards. Similarly, alignment to general education was another factor identified by several special education teachers.

Teacher understanding of reading comprehension instruction varied and responses suggested that teachers may not truly understand the importance of explicit reading comprehension instruction for their students with LD who struggle with reading. Teachers did, however, report mixed levels of preparation to teach reading, and many expressed a desire for additional professional development to better prepare them to provide their students with effective reading instruction. In summary, these personal, school, and student-related factors were often interrelated and underscore the complexity of reading comprehension instruction in urban special education classrooms.

4. Discussion

As noted previously, a large number of adolescents with LD experience difficulty comprehending what they read, particularly in US secondary schools where much of the content is learned by reading complex texts [ 63]. However, previous observation studies on reading instruction for students with LD have focused heavily at the elementary level [ 64] and surprisingly little is known about what reading comprehension instruction for students with LD looks like in US urban high schools. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe and understand the reality of reading comprehension instruction in secondary special education reading classrooms for ninth grade students with LD.

Results from classroom observations conducted in this study indicate that special education teachers identified and implemented a number of reading comprehension strategies, practices, and activities-although not all were typically considered "best practices" for reading comprehension. The most frequently observed practices included student and teacher read aloud and independent seatwork which indicated that although teachers believed that large amount of class time was devoted to comprehension instruction in reality they were not providing evidenced based comprehension instruction. This is not surprising, since secondary teachers often will try to make instruction less difficult for students with LD by implementing these types of activities [ 65]. Teachers in the study were observed using more effective instructional practices such as questioning, activating prior knowledge, and using graphic organizers with some frequency [ 19]. Teachers also exposed students to several reading comprehension strategies such as summarizing, annotating, and previewing, but explicit instruction in how and when to use reading comprehension strategies was not observed nor did they provide students with opportunities to practice using the strategies independently. Additionally, findings from teacher interviews reveal that a wide variety of student, school, and personal factors influenced their instruction, including their students' abilities and needs, test preparation, and personal interests. In general, the quality of the reading comprehension instruction not only varied across teachers, but also was inconsistent across each of the lessons from an individual teacher.

These findings were very similar to those found in elementary settings, where elementary teachers were also not observed providing this explicit instruction or using complex strategies [ 65]. This is particularly alarming, as students with LD are unlikely to infer the strategies required for comprehension [ 66]. A "never assume" approach has been suggested when working with students with LD [ 67]. In fact, it has been advised, "readers who are not explicitly taught these procedures are unlikely to learn, develop, or use them spontaneously" [ 41]. Therefore, it is important that teachers provide explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies and provide many opportunities to apply these strategies under the guidance of their teachers [ 68]. Additionally, despite the positive effects of targeted instruction for small groups of students and the wide range of reading abilities present in these classrooms, instruction was predominantly teacher-centered and the most common grouping structure observed was whole group instruction, which comprised two-thirds of the grouping practices used during observed lessons. Instruction was largely undifferentiated, and all students were expected to read the same text, respond to the same questions, and participate in the same activities.

Reading text aloud during reading comprehension instruction was a critical aspect of all the classes observed with most teachers to quickly identify it as a common comprehension practices used in their class. All teachers either read the written text aloud to their students or had students take turns reading it aloud with many teachers incorporating both into their lessons. During read aloud activities, the entire class was always involved, and all students were responsible for the same text. The practice of having students read aloud typically lasted for about half of the class period when incorporated into the lesson. When students read aloud, they often read for pages at a time and many students demonstrated significant difficulty with decoding and word recognition indicating that the text read was not at their instructional reading level. In light of what is known about the relationship between decoding and reading comprehension, this procedure likely interfered with the ability to comprehend the text for both the reader and for his/her classmates who were listening to the reading [ 69]. In addition to students reading aloud, teachers also frequently read aloud to the class. During this time, students were typically not actively engaged in any reading activities other than possibly listening. Instead, student expectations during read aloud were often unclear and students were observed engaging in other activities, including sleeping, talking and working on other assignments.

Research suggests that teacher read aloud can be a component of reading comprehension instruction for older struggling readers as it provides students with access to text that they may not be able to read independently and allows them to engage in a text experience with a more proficient reader [ 70]. However, for students with LD, the instructional practice of reading aloud by itself is not sufficient for improving reading comprehension and should never replace systematic, explicit instruction in comprehension strategy use [ 38]. Read alouds should be interactive, such that while text is read aloud, teachers should model and explain specific mental processes used to monitor comprehension and students should have multiple opportunities to practice the strategies modeled on their own with materials that they can manage independently [ 71].

Teacher and student read alouds were typically embedded with teacher-generated questions about the reading. Questions were typically posed to the whole group and asked students to recall information from or make inferences about the text. This instructional combination mirrors previous studies in elementary reading rooms, which found that reading comprehension was primarily delivered through teacher or student read alouds and that comprehension was primarily assessed through factual questioning initiated by the teacher [ 72, 73]. Consistent with these findings, a majority of the teacher-generated questions were straightforward, prompting students to recall information directly from the text [ 72]. In addition to recall-type questions, some teachers also asked students questions that prompted them to draw inferences by relating textual evidence to the reader's prior knowledge. Inference-type questions were regularly asked by one teacher and only occasionally by others. The ability to generate inferences is important to text comprehension as it allows the reader to integrate what they already know with what they read, and secondary students with LD have demonstrated improvements in reading comprehension and the ability to answer inference-type questions after receiving inference strategy instruction [ 74].

Several studies investigating the effects of questioning on reading comprehension have produced positive results for students with LD [ 21, 22, 23]. A critical component of effective questioning for comprehension; however, includes assisting students in becoming independent at self-questioning while reading. This includes teaching students how to generate and answer their own questions about text and providing students with strategies for what to do when they cannot answer a question [ 19]. Although teachers asked students a number of text-based questions, teachers did not provide students with instruction on how to generate their own questions or what to do if they could not answer teacher-generated questions. Often times, students were asked questions that they did not correctly answer and teachers responded by either ignoring the answer and resuming instruction or simply supplying students with the correct answer. The only example of strategy instruction related to questioning was observed in Angela's class when she taught students how to distinguish between questions that could be answered based on information in the text and questions that required prior knowledge or inference. In light of the prevalence of predominantly recall-type teacher questioning, coupled with the observed difficulty that many students displayed responding to these questions, it was especially concerning that not once did students receive instruction on how to generate their own questions about the text or how to activate a fix up strategy when they could not demonstrate comprehension. These findings mirror an earlier study in which secondary special educators had developed a routine of reading the text, finding the answer, explaining the answer, and telling students what to write down [ 48].

4.1. A Reality Check

Researches and policy makers frequently ask if research is making its way into classrooms. With mandates to use scientifically, evidence-based instruction, coupled with what we know about the reading profiles of students with LD and the key components of effective reading instruction, one would expect to see high quality, "specially designed", evidence-based comprehension instruction in special education reading classrooms. Unfortunately, based on these results for this small group of teachers, the answer is no. Special education was designed to provide students with "specific, direct, individualized, intense, remedial instruction" [ 75] (p. 178). Although these teachers certainly had the best intentions of meeting their students' individual needs, a common thread across all classrooms in this study was teacher-centered, undifferentiated instruction delivered to the whole group. Reading comprehension instruction was primarily devoted to reading aloud, questioning, and independent seatwork. And although many of the active reading strategies used by good readers (e.g., summarizing, questioning, previewing, predicting, etc.) were observed, students were not explicitly taught how and when to use these strategies. Given the characteristics of students with LD, namely their poor information processing and generalization skills, it is likely that students in the present study will have difficulty independently demonstrating the reading comprehension strategies, practices, and activities without considerable teacher support. Collectively, these findings illustrate the discrepancy between research and practice in these high school classroom.

4.2. Implications for Practice and Research

It is widely documented that the classroom teacher is the most powerful factor in determining student learning [ 52, 76, 77] and effective reading instruction is dependent on teachers' content knowledge, collaboration with others, and opportunities to make instructional decisions and reflect on their instruction [ 78]. Consequently, improved comprehension for students with LD requires strategy instruction and teacher preparation on how, when, and why to implement the strategies [ 6, 22]. Improved teacher preparation to meet the needs of students with disabilities has been an ongoing call that has remained relatively unanswered [ 79]. In light of the well-documented research to practice gap [ 80], however, it is critical that future secondary teachers receive professional development to meet the diverse needs of students of varying levels of reading achievement. Additionally, effective teacher education programs recognize that over time, teachers will become increasingly knowledgeable and skilled as their own expertise develops [ 81]. Therefore, ongoing support is crucial and research suggests that instructional coaching has been effective for increasing both preservice and inservice teachers' fidelity of implementing evidence-based practices [ 82]. The critical components of coaching include group-training sessions, follow up observations, and specific feedback including observation data, self-evaluation, and modeling. Furthermore, teachers must also have sustained opportunities to apply their new learning to their planning and instruction.

Given some of the challenges inherent in US urban secondary schools, specifically size and bureaucracy coupled with highly diverse student populations [ 83], these findings also have important implications for schools and administrators. It is critical that school administrators collaborate with special educators to share the instructional decision-making. Teachers need a curriculum that is aligned with assessments and teachers need the time and training to plan and teach that curriculum [ 84]. Using Feiman-Nemser's [ 85] framework of the "continuum of teacher learning", it is imperative that administrators recognize the various levels of support that teachers need throughout their careers and differentiate training to meet these various individual needs. For example, findings from this study suggest that teachers may benefit from professional development focused on a variety of topics, including assessment, thinking aloud, questioning, instructional planning, selecting texts, grouping, and pacing. Additionally, administrators must assume a more active role in monitoring the delivery of special education services to ensure that instruction is individualized and driven by student data.

5. Conclusions

The present study offered a rare glimpse into the reality of reading comprehension instruction for US adolescents with LD in special education settings and also presents compelling evidence of the need for advocacy on their behalf. The reading classrooms observed in this study is their reality. Typically, students do not have a voice in who teaches them, what they are taught, how they are taught, and where they are taught. Critics have long argued against the special education resource room, indicating that it consistently provides lower quality, less engaging instruction and condemn students to a lifetime of low groups. Therefore, it is essential that schools more closely monitor that students with disabilities are placed in the least restrictive environment for reading instruction and ensure that their needs are met, regardless of the setting. Furthermore, students must be provided with opportunities that increase the instructional intensity they receive through small groups or one-on-one instruction.

Moreover, it is critical that special education teachers have opportunities to develop their own knowledge, skills and use of time to effectively deliver evidence-based reading comprehension instruction, opportunities to reflect on their own instructional practices with colleagues, and student data to drive their instruction decisions. It is key that future research continue to focus on understanding the reading comprehension profiles of adolescents with LD to better match instruction with student needs. Specifically, this may provide educators with a better understanding of the level of intensity and explicitness required for effective comprehension instruction. Additionally, more observation research is needed on the types of instruction provided to adolescents with LD in secondary schools. Observation research should focus on instruction implemented by both general and special education teachers across multiple settings. Thus, the field needs to continue monitoring the extent that evidence-based practices are implemented in high school classrooms and determine ways to enhance this instruction.

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Reading Comprehension Instruction for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: A Reality Check

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Reading comprehension is a significant concern for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD), particularly in secondary schools in the United States (US) where content is taught primarily through textbooks.

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The article suggest the interchangability between studying vocabulary to become better readers and reading to develop a deeper verbal repertoire. 15 different vocabulary strategies were provided.

Vocabulary Strategies. (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://learningtasks.weebly.com/vocabulary-strategies.html

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BACKGROUND
Direct instruction of vocabulary can help students learn enough words to become better readers, and becoming a better reader can in turn help students learn even more vocabulary. So how do we teach students to learn or acquire new vocabulary? Research suggests that vocabulary instruction should include the following components: definitional and contextual information about a word; multiple exposures to a word in different contexts; and encouragement of students' active participation in their own learning of the new words.1 Here are 15 vocabulary activities that you can integrate into your classroom starting tomorrow!

1. Stahl, 30; Texas Reading Initiative, 20.

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Evaluation of Core Vocabulary Therapy for Deaf Children

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Evaluation of Core Vocabulary Therapy for Deaf Children

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The article specifically evaluated four 9-11 years old children with profound sensory-neural deafness fitted with cochlear/implants and or hearing aids. The main purpose of the evaluation was to determine whether core vocabulary intervention (CVT) improved single word speech speed accuracy, consistency and intelligibility. The conclusion appears to support the application of CVT for all children based on the findings of the "four" individuals.

Herman, R., Ford, K., Thomas, J., Oyebade, N., Bennett, D., & Dodd, B. (2015). Evaluation of core vocabulary therapy for deaf children: Four treatment case studies. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 31(2), 221-235. doi:10.1177/0265659014561875

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SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

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Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Depth of reading in Hearing and Hearing-Impaired individuals 

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Depth of reading in Hearing and Hearing-Impaired individuals 

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The article focused on examining the vocabulary development of grade 3-6 hearing and deaf students while particularly, focusing on the disadvantages of deaf students. The study investigated the word knowledge of children on 100 target words while utilizing two different tasks. In addition, they focused on identifying whether or not children who recognize certain words can own the word by applying it in other areas.

Coppens, K. M., Tellings, A., Verhoeven, L., & Schreuder, R. (2010). Depth of reading vocabulary in hearing and hearing-impaired children. Reading and Writing, 24(4), 463-477. doi:10.1007/s11145-010-9237-z

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Abstract

The main point of our study was to examine the vocabulary knowledge of pupils in grades 3-6, and in particular the relative reading vocabulary disadvantage of hearing-impaired pupils. The achievements of 394 pupils with normal hearing and 106 pupils with a hearing impairment were examined on two vocabulary assessment tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task. The target words in both tasks represent the vocabulary children should have at the end of primary school. The results showed that most hearing pupils reached this norm, whereas most hearing-impaired pupils did not. In addition, results showed that hearing-impaired pupils not only knew fewer words, but that they also knew them less well. This lack of deeper knowledge remained even when matching hearing and hearing-impaired children on minimal word knowledge. Additionally, comparison of the two tasks demonstrated the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge.

Keywords: Vocabulary, Hearing impairment, Lexical decision, Use decision, Reading comprehension

In literate societies it is of great importance to be able to comprehend written discourse. Important information is contained in books, manuals, instructions, labels, and booklets, and in order to understand this information, vocabulary knowledge is of vital importance. It is well known that there is a relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (e.g., Aarnoutse & Van Leeuwe, 2000; Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982; Curtis, Collins, Gitomer, & Galser, 1983; Eldredge, 1990; Qian, 2002; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007). Significant correlations between vocabulary knowledge and reading achievement scores have also been found in hearing-impaired students (LaSasso & Davey, 1987; Paul & Gustafson, 1991).

In general, hearing-impaired children show lower levels of reading comprehension than their hearing peers (e.g., Paul, 1998; Traxler, 2000; Wauters, Van Bon, & Tellings, 2006a). More specifically, Wauters et al. ( 2006a) showed that hearing-impaired participants between 7 and 20 years performed at the reading comprehension level of 7-year-old hearing participants, on average. Only 4% of the hearing-impaired students in their study were reading at an age-appropriate level. The poor vocabulary (in terms of size and/or depth of semantic knowledge) of hearing-impaired students may limit their reading comprehension (Garrison, Long, & Dowaliby, 1997; Kelly, 1996; Luetke-Stahlman & Corcoran Nielsen, 2003; Paul, 2003; Wauters, Van Bon, Tellings, & Van Leeuwe, 2006b). Studies have shown that both the vocabulary size of hearing-impaired children is smaller (Kelly, 1996; Pittman, Lewis, Hoover, & Stelmachowicz, 2005), and their vocabulary knowledge is less deep (Kelly, 1996; Paul & Gustafson, 1991; Traxler, 2000). Only a few studies examined the qualitative differences in deeper word knowledge more thoroughly in hearing-impaired students relative to hearing students. McEvoy, Marschark, and Nelson ( 1999) and Marschark, Convertino, McEvoy, and Masteller ( 2004) examined the structure and application of taxonomic knowledge in deaf students. Marschark et al. ( 2004) focused on superordinate-subordinate relations with a single-word association task, and the application of taxonomic knowledge was explored in McEvoy et al. ( 1999), using an analogies task. The responses of the deaf students in both studies were compared with responses given by hearing students. Their results showed that, in general, the conceptual knowledge of deaf students is less coherent and consistent than the conceptual knowledge of hearing students. However, they only used norms of hearing children and did not examine the way in which different levels of word knowledge relate to each other in both children with and without hearing impairments.

In the present study we investigated the achievements of hearing and hearing-impaired children on two vocabulary assessment tasks; a traditional lexical decision task and a 'use decision task'. A lexical decision task examines minimal word knowledge of a reader, namely, whether the reader recognizes a certain string of letters as a word of the target language. In order to recognize existing word patterns, the reader should have encountered the word before and stored it in his or her memory. A use decision task requires some knowledge of word meaning, namely, whether the reader recognizes (in)correct use of a word. Readers are presented with a target word and four short sentences in which the target word is used. They then have to choose in which sentence the target word is used best. For example, readers are presented with the target word train and the sentences: "The train sings", "The train sleeps", "The train goes", and "The train lies" and have to choose the sentence "The train goes" as the best answer.

By contrasting the scores on these two tasks, we aimed to answer two different but related questions. First, are the size and depth of word knowledge the same for hearing and hearing-impaired pupils? We expected that hearing-impaired children were familiar with fewer words and that they knew them less well than hearing pupils. On balance, hearing-impaired children encounter fewer words than hearing children, because they are relatively deprived of linguistic input, at least with respect to spoken language. Second, is the relation between the two tasks similar for both groups? We expected that when hearing and hearing-impaired children scored similar on the lexical decision task, the hearing-impaired children would still score more poorly on the use decision task. Consequently, more often than hearing-impaired children, hearing children would make an item correct in the use decision task if they recognized the target word in the lexical decision task as an existing word. The reduced linguistic input hearing-impaired children receive, not only means coming across fewer words, but also coming across these words less often. In addition, encountering words frequently, in different contexts, helps to get a deeper knowledge of word meaning (Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987).

Additionally, by comparing the two tasks we investigated the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge. Balota ( 1994) discussed variables on the whole word level that influence word recognition, such as word frequency. Previous studies suggested that lexical-level information is used in lexical decision tasks (Balota & Chumbley, 1984). Marcolini, Burani, and Colombo ( 2009) also showed the use of lexical information in lexical decision tasks in research with children. These studies indicated that lexical decision is influenced by (some level of) word knowledge, and that during a lexical decision task also (some) deeper word knowledge is activated, although the task technically only requires pattern recognition. The performance on lexical decision was used successfully before as a predictor of scores on a vocabulary test (i.e., the Vocabulary Levels Test, Nation 1990) by Mochida and Harrington ( 2006). They found that the score on the lexical decision test was a strong predictor of performance on the Vocabulary Levels Test.

Presuming that the lexical decision task and the use decision task correlate strongly, the lexical decision task may be used as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge. The advantage of the lexical decision task is that it is easy to construct. The same task, containing target words that are different though similar in lexical characteristics, can be administered several times a year, making it possible to follow the development of children more closely.

Read ( 2000) raised the question about how to choose target words for vocabulary testing. The language sample used should reflect the goal of the test, for example, to examine a child's general level of vocabulary knowledge or a child's level on a certain norm. This study was designed to examine a pupil's vocabulary knowledge in terms of the expected reading vocabulary of children at the end of primary school, thus taking a domain referenced criterion. Perhaps not surprisingly, there are no surveys of the expected vocabulary of (hearing) Dutch children, except for a list of words 6-year old Dutch and Flemish children should preferably know orally (Schaerlaekens, Kohnstamm, & Lejaegere, 1999). Therefore, we used words from the Cito Eindtoets Basisonderwijs [Cito End of Primary School Test, henceforward Cito test] of 2004, 2005, and 2006 to create a word list ( www.cito.nl). Cito is an influential Dutch test institute that provides several school performance tests for primary and secondary schools. About 90% of the Dutch primary schools use the Cito test in the last grade of primary school, to determine which secondary school is suitable for their students. Furthermore, most secondary schools use the score on the Cito test as a criterion to place children at a certain school level. By using these tests to make a representative word list, we have a sample of words that can be viewed as an implicit norm for words known at the end of primary school. A detailed description of how the representative word list was created can be found in the " Methods " section.

In sum, in this study we examined the vocabulary knowledge of hearing and hearing-impaired children in grades 3-6 using a lexical decision task and a use decision task. By investigating the achievements on these two tasks we gauged the differences between levels of word knowledge for our two groups of readers, and we examined the utility of the lexical decision task as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge. The target words used represent an implicit norm for expected vocabulary knowledge at the end of primary school.

Method

Participants

The participants in this study were children in grades 3-6 from elementary schools throughout the Netherlands. In total, 518 children participated in this study. Four hundred and twelve children with normal hearing (216 boys and 196 girls) between the ages of seven and 14 years ( M = 10 years 3 months, SD = 1 year, 1 month) participated and 106 students with hearing impairment (55 boys and 51 girls) between the ages of eight and 13 years ( M = 10 years 7 months, SD = 1 year, 1 month).

Of the hearing children, 122 were in grade 3, 199 in grade 6, 58 in grade 7, and 33 in grade 8. For the hearing-impaired children reporting the distribution is not as clear-cut since most children are in combined classes and move up according to both age and achievements. About 58 children were in grade 3/4 and 48 in grade 5/6. Thus, the hearing-impaired are not only significantly older ( t [159] = −3.37, p < .01) they also had more years of formal instruction.

Teachers supplied demographic data for the children pertaining to date of birth, gender, and IQ. If there were no official data on IQ, teachers were asked to rate the IQ of children on a 5-point scale, with three being average (100). The children in this study had no additional disabilities except for corrected vision, and they all had an IQ of at least 80. Children with a 1-rating were removed from the sample. All hearing-impaired children had at least an 80-decibel hearing impairment in the better unaided ear and 60 children had a cochlear implant. Of the 106 children with hearing-impairments, 25 were in mainstream settings and 81 were in special education schools. The hearing children in the sample are all classmates of the hearing-impaired children in mainstream settings. In the Netherlands, the tuition in special education for hearing-impaired children is bilingual by law. Furthermore, the language used at home for the children in mainstream settings was mainly a spoken language (14 used spoken Dutch and two another spoken language) or a combination of spoken Dutch and Sign (either Sign supported Dutch or Dutch Sign Language). Of the children in special education 13 used mainly a spoken language, 41 children used a combination of a spoken language and Sign (either Sign supported Dutch or Dutch Sign Language) and 22 children used mainly Sign supported Dutch, Dutch Sign Language, or a combination of both. Of five children the language used at home was not known.

Materials

Procedure

In this study we investigated the word knowledge of children on 100 target words using two different tasks. Since this study is part of a larger experiment, the 100 target words of our study were presented at the same time as 80 other target words that were selected similarly (the same holds for the construction of the pseudowords).

The experiment was divided over three testing sessions to reduce the work-load. Each session consisted of a lexical decision task and a use decision task. To administer the lexical decision task, the 180 target words and 180 pseudowords were divided over three word lists; one for each session. Each list consisted of 60 target words and 60 pseudowords. Importantly, the 100 target words of our study were semi-randomly divided over the word lists, in order that the words were distributed equally over the three lists. After finishing the word list, the participants went along with a use decision task. This task contained the same target words as the preceding word list, though in a different order. The three sessions were spread over two or more daily periods. To control for order effects, there were four versions that were randomly divided over the classes. The tasks were administered in class by the first author.

As noted above, each session started with a lexical decision task. The instruction was given in the modality preferred by the children (Sign Language of the Netherlands or spoken Dutch). Children were asked to read the letter strings on the word list column by column and cross out the pseudowords. At the front of the first word list an example was given. Children had to cross out the pseudowords in the example themselves (as opposed to only the test leader), to make sure that they understood the intention of the task.

After finishing the lexical decision task, children received the instruction for the use decision task. In this task, the target word and four short sentences in which the target word was used were projected on a screen. After the item had disappeared, the screen turned black for a few seconds, and then the next item appeared. This procedure was applied to make sure that all children would finish the task in a reasonable time, and judged all items.

Children were instructed to read the target word and the four sentences, and to choose in which sentence the target word was used best. If they believed that there were two sentences in which the word was used correctly, they were instructed to choose the best answer. Participants were also instructed to guess an answer if they did not know the right answer. Children had to mark their answer on an answering sheet. To make sure that the child understood the intention of the task, the children made two examples at the beginning of the first use decision task and the instructor discussed the answers of these examples with the children.

During the second and third session a shortened version of the instructions was given, highlighting only the main points.

Results

Correction for chance

Before correcting for chance, scores were corrected for items that were omitted by children due to illness or such. The correction formula assumed that children would make the same amount of mistakes on the items they missed out on as on the items they did make. Next, we used the correction index of Huibregtse, Admiraal, and Meara ( 2002) to correct the scores on the lexical decision task for guessing as well as for individual's response style. This index is based on the signal detection theory (SDT): I SDT = 1 − (4 h [1 − f] − 2[ h − f]{1 + h − f}/(4 h [1 − f] − [ h − f] {1 + h − f}), in which h is the hit rate and f is the false alarm rate. A hit is correctly recognizing a pseudoword as a non-existing word and crossing it out. A false alarm is incorrectly recognizing an existing word as a pseudoword and crossing it out. Huibregtse et al. ( 2002) defined a hit as correctly identifying a word as an existing word. They assumed that learners are presented visually with one word and are asked to indicate whether or not they know the meaning of the word and to answer with `yes' or `no'. However, in this study all items were presented at the same time on a paper and children were asked to cross out pseudowords, since this is more natural than crossing out an existing word.

To be able to compare the scores of the hearing and hearing-impaired children on the use decision task, we matched hearing and hearing-impaired children on their scores on the lexical decision task ( t < 1). The matched sample consisted of a group of 32 children with normal hearing and a group of 32 children with a hearing impairment.

Hit rates and false alarm rates of both the unmatched and matched groups of hearing and hearing-impaired children can be found in Table . Index-scores were multiplied by one hundred to facilitate the comparison of these scores to the scores on the use decision task.

We used the correction for blind guessing (cfbg) to correct the scores on the use decision task. This formula is widely used in the field of language testing, for multiple choice items (Beeckmans et al., 2001). In the cfbg the participant has a chance of 1/ k to give the correct answer, k being the total number of alternatives. For the use decision task k was 4.

Data reduction

Children that had a score on one of the tasks that was at a greater distance from the median than 1.5 times the IRQ were removed from the sample. As a consequence 18 hearing children were removed from the data set and none of the hearing-impaired children.

Analyses

The first research question of this study concerned the comparison of the group of children with normal hearing and the group of children with a hearing-impairment on the two vocabulary tasks to gauge differences in size and depth of reading vocabulary knowledge. The means and standard deviations of the corrected scores of the two groups of children on the two tasks can be found in Table . T-tests showed that hearing children did significantly better on the lexical decision task than hearing-impaired children: t (111.22) = 11.72, p < .01 (two-tailed), and that they also performed significantly better on the use decision task: t (106.42) = 13.78, p < .01 (two-tailed).

The second aim was to examine the relation between the two tasks for both groups. First, we examined whether the relation between the two tasks differed for hearing-impaired and hearing children. Therefore, the scores of the matched groups on the use decision task were analyzed. A two-sided t-test showed that the scores of the matched hearing and hearing-impaired children on the use decision task differed significantly, t (42) = 3.24, p < .01. The means showed that the hearing children still scored higher on the use decision task than the hearing-impaired children even after matching the two groups on basic word knowledge.

Next, we examined whether hearing children, more often than hearing-impaired children, made an item correct in the use decision task if they recognized the target word in the lexical decision task. For each child we computed in what percentage of the cases that the child recognized a target word in the lexical decision task, he or she also recognized the correct use of that target word in the use decision task. For example, a child that recognized 93 target words in the lexical decision task and scored 64 of these 93 target words correct in the use decision task, received a percentage score of 67.4%. Results showed that in 94.5% of the cases that a hearing child recognized an item in the lexical decision task, it also scored the item correct in the use decision task, whereas this percentage was only 66.4% for the hearing-impaired children. A t-test showed that this difference was significant, t (107) = 13.77, p < .01 (two-tailed). Similar results were found if we examined this difference in the group of children that were matched on their scores on the lexical decision task: t (42) = 3.24, p < .01 (two-tailed). In 95.0% of the cases that a hearing child recognized an item in the lexical decision task, it also scored the item correct in the use decision task, whereas this percentage was 89.8% for the hearing-impaired children.

Finally, the study was designed to investigate the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of semantic knowledge. The results showed that achievements of the children on both tasks were strongly correlated with each other: r = .89, p < .01. The correlation in the group of hearing children was r = .45, p < .01 and in the group of hearing-impaired children even r = .90, p < .01.

If we picture the relation in a scatter plot, as in Fig. , two matters stand out. First, it can be observed that there is a large variation in scores within the hearing-impaired children. Some hearing-impaired children did as well as hearing children, whereas others achieved even below chance level. Second, it can be observed that almost all hearing children obtained a score of more than 85% on the use decision task. This supposed ceiling effect in the group of hearing children probably reduced the range in scores to such an extent that it was difficult to find a correlation. Nonetheless, a One-way ANOVA showed that the mean scores of the grades differed significantly for hearing children ( F [3, 393] = 13.96, p < .01). In grade 3 ( n = 112) the mean score was M = 89.87 (SD = 5.34), whereas this was higher in the other grades: grade 4 ( n = 194, M = 92.51, SD = 4.37), grade 5 ( n = 57, M = 83.41, SD = 4.58), and grade 6 ( n = 31, M = 94.72, SD = 3.87). Thus, the higher the grade, the better the score was.

Discussion

The purpose of our study was to examine the vocabulary knowledge of children with normal hearing and of children with a hearing impairment. Therefore, we administered a lexical decision task to assess minimal word knowledge and a use decision task to assess a deeper form of word knowledge. Our first aim was to ascertain whether hearing and hearing-impaired pupils knew the same amount of words and whether they knew these words to the same extent. In accordance with previous studies, our results showed that the hearing-impaired children both recognized fewer words than the hearing children in the lexical decision task, and recognized the (in)correct use of the target words less often in the use decision task.

Secondly, we wanted to investigate the relation between the two tasks in the two groups. Even if children recognize a pattern as an existing word in the lexical decision task, the question remains whether they also have lexical semantic knowledge of the word and can recognize its correct use. Our results showed that when hearing children and hearing-impaired children had a similar amount of minimal word knowledge, hearing-impaired children still scored more poorly on the use decision task. At the level of the individual words we found a similar difference. The chance that a child that recognized a word in the lexical decision task, would also recognize the correct use of this word in the use decision task, was greater for hearing children than for hearing-impaired children. This finding was robust when matching children with and without a hearing impairment on their scores on the lexical decision task. These results suggest that hearing-impaired children not only have smaller vocabularies, but that they also differ from hearing children with respect to the depth of their word knowledge.

These findings are similar to the results of McEvoy et al. ( 1999) and Marschark et al. ( 2004): there remained a qualitative difference in word knowledge between hearing-impaired and hearing children even when their minimal word knowledge was similar. A lack of linguistic input can account for these findings, reinforced by a Matthew effect (cf. Stanovich, 1986). Children with a hearing impairment do not only come across fewer words, they also come across these words less often. Moreover, hearing-impaired children probably also read less and are exposed to less written language than their hearing peers due to their inadequate vocabularies, and as a result they develop their vocabulary knowledge more slowly. Through frequent encounters with a word in differing contexts, children deepen their vocabulary knowledge, by learning the features and concepts related to the word, how to use it, and the multiple meanings of the word.

Although minimal word knowledge is a necessary condition for deeper word knowledge, it is not sufficient. Recognizing a word pattern and knowing the individual meaning of a word is a necessary start, but to comprehend discourse, the entire knowledge framework surrounding the word is essential (Paul, 1996). A practical implication of this is that vocabulary instruction should focus on integrating a word in a child's semantic network. Teachers may start with pronouncing and signing words and teaching the common meanings of words (and the focus should be on this for those children that score low on the lexical decision task, since they do not even recognize most word patterns). However, subsequently the instruction should move away from definition approaches, and focus on relating the word to knowledge a child already has, and encountering and using the word many times in many differing contexts (Paul & Gustafson, 1991).

A final aim of our study was to investigate the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of semantic knowledge; we did this by comparing the scores in the two tasks. The results showed that the scores on the two tasks were strongly related for both hearing and hearing-impaired children: children who scored at a high level on the lexical decision task also scored at a high level on the use decision task. Therefore, the lexical decision task can be used to obtain a general measure of vocabulary knowledge and to predict the score on a task that measures a deeper form of word knowledge. This is consistent with the finding of Mochida and Harrington ( 2006) that the performance of hearing students on the Yes/No test, another format of the lexical decision task, was a strong predictor of performance on the Vocabulary Levels Test (in this task children have to match target words to the correct definitions).

However, the variation in the hearing-impaired children was much larger than in the group of hearing children. This explains why the correlation between the two tasks was much stronger for children with a hearing impairment. The lexical decision task provided sufficient information to differentiate between hearing-impaired children, and it was a good predictor of deeper word knowledge in this group. Thus, lexical decision not only can be used as a first screening device in this group, but may even be sufficient as a measure of vocabulary.

The results showed that almost all hearing children scored more than 85% of the items correct on the use decision task, making it much more difficult to differentiate hearing children on minimal and deeper word knowledge with these two tasks. Nonetheless, the mean scores of the grades differ significantly and the higher the grade, the better the score. Our results showed that the children in grade 6 with normal hearing knew practically all target words. Knowledge of these target words is indispensable to comprehend the questions in the Cito test. Thus, hearing children most probably will not score at a low level on the Cito tests due to a lack of knowledge of the words used. However, many hearing-impaired children did not even have minimal knowledge of the target words, therefore, the Cito test cannot measure the general knowledge of hearing-impaired children; instead, it rather will reflect their (lack of) vocabulary knowledge.

There are great individual differences in the group of hearing-impaired pupils. It is important that future research tries to uncover what causes this large variation and which key features can predict whether and to what extent hearing-impaired children know the meaning of the words used in tests such as the Cito tests. As Prezbindowski and Lederberg ( 2003) indicated, an important issue might be the large variation in language input in hearing-impaired children and the fact that many children are exposed to more than one language, usually a sign language and a spoken language. A consequence of this might be that some low achieving children do have deep lexical semantic knowledge of a concept, but maybe only in sign language and not in written language. It should be examined how the variation in language input is related to differences in implicit metalinguistic knowledge and in syntactic knowledge. Perhaps low scores on the use decision task are explained by these differences: some sentences could be grammatically correct in Sign Language of the Netherlands, but not in written Dutch, and do therefore lead to typical 'deaf-mistakes'.

In sum, our results indicated that hearing-impaired children not only have problems due to the fact that they know fewer words, but also because they have less in-depth knowledge of words. In order to examine this difference in depth of knowledge, hearing and hearing-impaired children should be matched on minimal knowledge. Moreover, both the lexical decision task and the use decision task can be used to assess vocabulary knowledge of children with normal hearing and with hearing impairment. The lexical decision task even appears to be a good indicator for deeper vocabulary knowledge in hearing-impaired children.

Acknowledgments

We thank Peter-Arno Coppen en Hans van Halteren of the Department of Linguistics for parsing the three databases containing the texts of the End of primary school tests of 2004, 2005, and 2006 with Amazon/Casus.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Footnotes

¹ Children were not informed about the word-pseudoword ratio, because this would be like giving children a percentage of words they (should) know. To be able to discern existing words from pseudowords, children have to discriminate between letter strings they have encountered and stored, and letter strings they have never encountered and/or stored. So, actually, we ask children to cross out the words they do not know. Informing the children about the word-pseudoword ratio will force them to make guesses. Moreover, information about the ratio is usually not given in lexical decision tasks.

References

Anderson RC, Freebody P. Vocabulary knowledge. In: Guthrie JT, editor. Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews. Newark, DE: International Reading Association; 1981.

Baayen RH, Piepenbrock R, Rijn H. The CELEX Lexical Database. Technical report, Linguistic Data Consortium. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania; 1993.

Balota DA. Visual word recognition: The journey from features to meaning. In: Gernsbacher MA, editor. Handbook of psycholinguistics. New York: Academic Press; 1994.

Beeckmans R, Eyckmans J, Janssens V, Dufranne M, Velde H. Examining the Yes/No vocabulary test: Some methodological issues in theory and practice. Language Testing. 2001;18(3):235-274.

Coppen, P. A. (1995) A new version of the Amazon/Casus system. In P. De Haan & N. Oostdijk (Eds.), Proceedings of the Department of Language and Speech, Vol. 18 (1994), 85-90. Nijmegen: Radboud University Nijmegen.

Curtis, M. E., Collins, J. M., Gitomer, D. H., & Galser, R. (1983). Word knowledge influences on comprehension. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada.

Eldredge JL. Causal relationships between phonics, reading comprehension, and vocabulary achievement in the second grade. Journal of Educational Research. 1990;83(4):201-214.

LaSasso C, Davey B. The relationship between lexical knowledge and reading comprehension for prelingually, profoundly hearing-impaired students. The Volta Review. 1987;89:211-220.

Nagy WE, Anderson RC, Herman PA. Learning word meanings from context during normal reading. American Educational Research Journal. 1987;24(2):237-270.

Nation ISP. Teaching and learning vocabulary. Rowley, MA: Newbury House; 1990.

Paul PV. Literacy and deafness. The development of reading, writing, and literate thought. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn and Bacon; 1998.

Paul PV. Processes and components of reading. In: Marschark M, Spencer PE, editors. Oxford Handbook of deaf studies, language and education. New York: Oxford University Press; 2003.

Pittman AL, Lewis DE, Hoover BM, Stelmachowicz PG. Rapid word-learning in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children: Effects of age, receptive vocabulary, and high-frequency amplification. Ear and Hearing. 2005;26(6):619-629. doi: 10.1097/01.aud.0000189921.34322.68. [PMC free article]

Read J. Assessing vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000.

Schaerlaekens AM, Kohnstamm GA, Lejaegere M. Streeflijst woordenschat voor 6-jarigen [Target list vocabulary for six-year-olds] Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger BV; 1999.

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Depth of reading vocabulary in hearing and hearing-impaired children

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The main point of our study was to examine the vocabulary knowledge of pupils in grades 3-6, and in particular the relative reading vocabulary disadvantage of hearing-impaired pupils. The achievements of 394 pupils with normal hearing and 106 pupils with a hearing impairment were examined on two vocabulary assessment tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task.

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100 Words every Middle Schooler should know

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100 Words every Middle Schooler should know

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This website focuses on the 100 words every middle schooler should know. There are a list of 100 words with clear definitions. The website can be used to test the breadth of a middle schoolers vocabulary to ensure their vocabulary comprehension is on grade level.

(NY), D. 1. (n.d.). 100 Words Every Middle Schooler Should Know. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.vocabulary.com/lists/558097

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According to the article, The goal of spelling instruction should not be temporary memorization of words but rather the development of skills to be able to correctly represent our written language. The information in this article suggest a bias towards the application of phonological awareness to teaching children spellings.

Gagen, M. (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://www.righttrackreading.com/howtospell.html

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Teaching Children How to Spell

Helping Students Develop Spelling Skills

General Information for Parent and Teachers

First and foremost, beginning spelling instruction should always emphasize the phonetic nature of spelling . The fact is written English is based on a phonemic alphabet. Please see Background Facts on the English Language. While the written English code is complex, it absolutely is a phonemic code. Therefore, effective spelling instruction should always emphasize the phonemic nature of spelling. If children learn to 'spell' words based on phonemic processing it greatly improves their spelling ability.

This article is organized in the following sections:

Foundation for Spelling Success

To develop a foundation for spelling success and strengthen spelling skills the student needs to:

1. Develop Phonemic Awareness : Phonemic awareness (PA) is critical to spelling development. The child needs to be able to recognize and distinguish the sounds within spoken words in order to then translate these sounds back to print. If the child has a phonemic weakness, you need to help that child strengthen their phonemic awareness with PA training. The great news is that research proves PA training has "strong and significant effects on reading and spelling development" (National Reading Panel) See Phonemic Awareness Explained.

2. Understand phonemic nature of spelling : The student needs to understand written English is based on a phonemic code. In other words printed black squiggles represent sounds in the word.

3. Learn the phonemic code : The student needs to learn the complete phonemic code. The English phonemic code is complex and the student needs to learn the complete code in order to handle these complexities. The student needs to learn the code systematically beginning with the basic code and then adding the complexities with vowel combinations, r-controlled combinations and other intricacies. Although there is code overlap (more than one way to write a sound), irregular and unexpected spellings, English is based on this phonemic code.

4. Approach the process of spelling phonemically : The student needs to base their spelling on converting the sounds in the spoken word into print. They need to write the phonemic code for the sounds in the word. Spelling needs to be approached as recoding sound to print. Once again phonemic awareness is a critical skill. The child must have the phonemic awareness to recognize and distinguish the sounds within words. If your child has a phonemic weakness, you need to help the child strengthen their phonemic awareness.

5. Acquire knowledge of spelling patterns and learn helpful guidelines : The student needs to learn and practice the common spelling patterns that are used in English. There are also guidelines that can help us learn correct spelling. While there are exceptions and irregularities most words follow common patterns. There are also a number of helpful guidelines to aid us in accurate spelling. Children are better able to achieve spelling success when they learn and practice these common patterns and helpful guidelines.

6. Learn/memorize specific and 'tricky' spellings : For accurate spelling the student does need to learn the correct spelling for common words and begin memorizing the specific spelling pattern used for particular words. Accurate spelling can be tricky and does require remembering which spelling pattern is used within certain words.

Recommendations for Effective Spelling Instruction: Designing Spelling Instruction to Establish the Foundation of Phonologic Re-coding (Spelling) of words and Build Intermediate and Advanced Spelling Skills

The following recommendations for effective spelling instruction are designed to help the student learn accurately represent our written language (spell words) by establishing a strong foundation of phonologic processing and developing knowledge of common spelling patterns and guidelines. Reading and spelling are strongly related processes. Reading is the process of changing printed words into language. Spelling is the converse process of changing spoken words back into print. Not only is effective direct systematic phonics reading instruction proven to enhance children's success in learning to read but direct systematic phonics improves children's ability to spell. Effective instruction closely coordinates and directly links reading and spelling instruction. Teaching the child the foundation of our written language by linking decoding/reading (converting print to words/language) with recoding/spelling (converting spoken words to print) helps children learn and understand exactly how our written language works and establishes the necessary foundation so they can achieve success in both reading and spelling.

Effective spelling instruction is a process of developing and expanding skills. Effective instruction begins by building a strong foundation, systematically adds complexities and eventually advances to the higher level skills. Effective spelling instruction is linked to a strong direct systematic phonics program. It begins by teaching the child to 'write the sounds' of simple decodable words to establish the strong phonologic processing base for recoding or spelling words. Effective programs systematically expand the child's knowledge of the phonemic code, teach expected patterns and allow practice of these spelling patterns. The spelling instruction also explicitly teaches helpful spelling guidelines. In addition, the student continually practices correct spelling, acquires knowledge of expected patterns, and begins to memorize some of the 'tricky' and irregular words. The recommendations listed below can help your child or student develop a strong foundation for spelling success.

Specific Recommendations for Effective Spelling Instruction:

# 2 - Design your spelling program to establish the foundation of phonologic spelling and strengthen phonologic processing reading. In other words, directly teach your child the process of 'spelling' is writing or printing the sounds of the word or converting sound to print. Base spelling on 'writing the sounds' not on memorizing letter names. Teach spelling in a direct systematic, phonetic based manner. It is most effective to link spelling instruction directly to a strong direct, systematic phonics program. (See Direct Systematic Phonics Proven Effective).

# 3 - In the beginning, teach spelling as a part of the reading instruction . Coordinate the spelling instruction directly with the explicit instruction of the phonemic code conducted as part of the direct systematic phonics instruction. Initial spelling instruction starts with spelling of simple phonetic spelling of short decodable words. Decodable words include only the sounds and phonetic code the student has already learned. See Decodable Text Explained. The student learns to spell by 'writing' these decodable words. By spelling decodable words not only does the student develop a foundation for spelling but also strengthens phonologic processing pathways for proficient reading. For example, if the student has learned the sounds m, t, a, s, d, i, f, r, th; decodable words for spelling practice could include am, at, fat, did, mad, sat, dim, that, this, ram. Remember, decodable is based on the phonemic code the child has learned NOT the letters. With the example listed above the word 'rain' is NOT decodable and should not be included in the spelling instruction because the child has not learned that the vowel combination 'ai'=/ay/sound. The word 'rain' would not be included until after the vowel combination/phonemic code 'ai'=/ay/ had been directly taught to the child. For additional explanation of decodable words and examples of decodable words see the section Decodable Word Lists from the article on activities to develop phonologic processing.

In summary: In the learning stages spelling instruction needs to be directly linked to the effective direct systematic phonics program. Start simple and then as the student masters the basic sounds and skills, add the complexities in a systematic manner. Directly and systematically teach spelling with the basic code followed by vowel combinations, r-controlled vowel combinations and other complexities. The child learns and practices spelling words by sound that contain only the phonemic code that has been explicitly taught in the direct systematic phonics instruction.

Examples of effective beginning spelling lists can be found at Effective Beginning Spelling Lessons under Resources for Users of Right Track Reading Lessons. These lists were created from the decodable word lists in the Right Track Reading Lessons program. Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons program also has decodable word lists that can be used as a source for spelling practice.

The following example demonstrates how to make spelling lists that teach specific spelling patterns: If you are teaching the student to spell various words containing the /ay/ sound, group by spelling pattern.

List 1 would have the 'ai' words (rain, bait, brain, wait, grain, aim, aid...).

List 2 would give the 'ay' words (play, away, stay, pay, pray...).

List 3 would give the a-consonant-e spelling pattern (gate, trade, game, make, grade...).

List 4 would contain the single vowel 'a' spellings (rang, bank, thank, sang...).

List 5 would contain the 'unexpected' spellings of /ay/ (eight, weigh, great, ...).

By using this method of grouping common spelling patterns together, you can also teach and practice the expected patterns. For example in the word lists given above where you are teaching the 'ai' and 'ay' spellings, you can directly point out that the 'ai' is typically found at the middle of a syllable (rain, wait, brain) or occasionally beginning a syllable (aim, aid) and how the 'ai' spelling is never used at the end of a word since no English words end in the letter 'i'. You can show how the pattern 'ay' is found at the end of the words or sometimes the end of syllables and remind the student how words ending in the /ay/ sound would never be spelled with 'ai' and would need to be spelled with 'ay' or another spelling pattern. By grouping sounds you can directly teach these expected patterns. This can be contrasted with a much less effective approach of mixing many different spelling patterns within a single list. For example a mixed "long-a" list such as (wait, space, great, game, bang, play, they, eight) makes it difficult for the student to recognize and learn the individual ways we spell /ay/ or determine important patterns such as the 'ai' spelling is never used at the end of a word.

A sample of helpful guidelines are listed in the article Teaching Helpful Spelling Guidelines and Patterns. The Right Track Reading Lessons and Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons program includes a section of spelling lessons that teach these and many other helpful spelling guidelines.

# 6 - Have the student practice spelling words: The student needs to practice spelling words. They need to learn what spelling pattern is used for a specific word. The most effective and efficient way to have the student learn specific spelling words is to have the student write the word 5 to 10 times while saying the sounds. The student needs to say the sounds, NOT the letter names. It is simple; all you need is paper and pencil. It's efficient because it directly teaches the necessary print to sound and you are not wasting time on processes that have nothing to do with spelling. It is highly effective because it directly builds knowledge in the correct printed representation of the word using multisensory processes (kinetic-forming the letters), visual (seeing the correct print), oral/auditory (saying and hearing the word). Writing the word 5-10 times provides the repetition that enhances learning. Simple, effective and efficient. For details see the section below on Spelling Tips for Students. Repeatedly writing a spelling word while paying attention to the phonemic code and saying the sounds is a effective, efficient way for the student to learn spelling words and develop spelling skills.

# 8 - Directly teach the student how to spell mutisyllable words : For multisyllable words, teach the student to sound out and spell by syllable. Writing the word by syllable helps prevent the common problem of leaving out parts of the word. The student also needs to be aware on 'lazy' pronunciation of unstressed syllables and should practice common affixes. Spelling of multisyllable words should be coordinated with instruction on reading multisyllable words. See Handling Multisyllable Words.

# 9 - Spelling instruction techniques to avoid in the learning stages :

Avoid spelling lists with multiple spelling patterns for single sounds and mixed lists of phonetically unrelated words: Lists containing mixed and multiple spelling patterns for the same sound should be avoided in the learning stages. These mixed lists make it harder for the child to learn foundational spelling skills and can actually create difficulties and confusion in the learning stages. Using a list of mixed spellings for a sound, especially before the student has learned all the individual patterns, contributes to confusion. Mixed lists not only make spelling difficult but they often prevent students from recognizing and learning the common patterns. For example if you use a mixed "long-a" list (wait, space, great, game, bang, play, they, eight) it is difficult for the student to recognize and learn the individual ways we spell /ay/. Contrast the effectiveness of this mixed/multiple spelling patterns list to the lists that were organized based on the same spelling pattern listed above in the example in #4 on grouping spelling patterns.

Avoid 'theme' based spelling lists containing words that are not decodable based on the students code knowledge : 'Theme' based spelling lists are frequently very poor tools for teaching spelling and should be avoided in the learning stages . For example a 'summer' theme that contains the words; summer, swimming, dive, pool, vacation, hot, ice cream, beach, picnic. While these lists do not present problems for those who already have knowledge of English spelling patterns, these types of mixed list makes recognizing and learning patterns difficult. At the younger beginning level, these lists also frequently contain patterns the student had not yet learned. As a result, the student often spells by memorizing random letters instead of learning how to correctly write our phonetic language. While students eventually need to learn all the spelling patterns and know which spelling pattern to use for what word, in the learning stages foundational spelling skills are most effectively taught in a systematic manner with decodable words and by grouping specific grouped by common phonetic spelling patterns.

Do NOT use 'invented spelling' where the student is allowed to 'discover' and write words however he would like to. Although the student will obviously make spelling errors and perfection should not be expected, do not allow and encourage the continued, repeated use of improper spelling. Instead of letting the student continuously repeat errors, simply teach them the correct way to spell the word. This is not just a minor problem with spelling a few words wrong. The use of "invented" or "self-discovery" spelling allows the student to learn and repeatedly reinforce incorrect patterns and form improper 'neural models' of the words. You witness this in the many perfectly bright older students who continue to spell they as 'thay'. Repeatedly writing 'thay' for years engrained the incorrect 'thay' representation in their brain. It is a disservice to the student to let them learn incorrectly. I strongly believe as parents and teachers it is our job to teach students the correct representation of our language. There are numerous things that are wonderful and necessary for students to discover on their own. However accurate representation of our written language is not one of them. Once again the corrections and teaching can and should be done in a positive manner. Acknowledging and even encouraging their phonetic spelling attempts should not preclude teaching correct spelling. "You wrote that word how it sounds. That's a great try. But let me show you the way that we actually spell it". It is always better to learn correctly!

Avoid worksheets and activities that show words spelled incorrectly: It is best to avoid all worksheet and activities that show words spelled incorrectly. You do NOT want the student to read incorrect spelling. Repeated exposure to incorrect spelling allows the student to build incorrect neural models of specific words and to actually learn combinations and patterns that do not exist in English. Check carefully! Many spelling worksheets and programs provide exposure to repeated incorrect spelling. While students do need to learn how to proofread and identify spelling errors, repeated exposure to incorrect spelling in the learning stages can be detrimental. If the student continually sees misspelled words they develop incorrect models of the words. In contrast, if the student learns the correct representation he is then better able to recognize incorrect spelling.

Avoid ineffective activities : Many spelling programs use inefficient activities to teach spelling. While puzzles and games such as solving codes, searching through word finds, unscrambling letters, and answering riddles, can be entertaining and provide other benefits these activities tend to be time consuming and often have limited value in directly developing spelling skills . Some of these activities such as jumbled letter arrangements can possibly confuse the development of correct spelling skills. At best these activities frequently consume large quantities of time on the activity itself (such as the searching process in a word find) instead of on developing a necessary skill (learning the correct written representation of words). In contrast, the highly effective and extremely efficient activity for directly developing spelling skills is to have the student repeatedly print the word 5 to 10 times correctly while saying the sound. Simple! Effective! Efficient!

Spelling Tips for Students: How to Study and Practice Spelling Words

The following section shares a few spelling tips for students. Spelling can be tricky. These tips can help students become better spellers.

#1 Spell by sound! Spell phonetically. Listen to the word. Say the word and write it/spell it by sound. Pay attention to how the sounds are spelled. Base spelling on 'writing' the sounds not on memorizing letter names.

#2 Learn expected spelling patterns and helpful guidelines. Practice spelling by common patterns. See the article Helpful Spelling Guidelines and Expected Patterns.

#3 When practicing specific words:

2. Next write the word at least 5 times (10 times is better), taking care to write the letters as you say the sound that they make. Look at which letters are making what sounds. Pay close attention to the 'partner' letter combinations. For example when writing the word "bird" you write 'b' as you say /b/ and write 'ir' as you say the /er/ sound and write 'd' as you say the /d/ sound. Notice specifically which letters are representing the sound. This is especially critical for sounds that have multiple spellings (specifically note that in bird, the /er/ sound is made by the 'ir').

3. For any multisyllable word, say and write the word by syllables. Example for the word 'consistent' you would write 'con' as you said /kun/, write 'sis' as you say /sis/, and write 'tent' as you say /tent/.

4. A helpful hint for learning how to spell a word is to pronounce all the sounds in the word, even if that is not how you actually say the word. We often speak 'lazy' English. This is fine in speaking and reading but it creates problems with accurate spelling. When you practice spelling completely pronounce all the sounds in the word. This often gives you a silly sounding 'proper' version of the word. Although we don't really say the word that way, it helps greatly when practicing spelling to say all the sounds. This is especially important with the 'schwa' pronunciation of many unstressed short vowels in multisyllable words where a 'proper' complete pronunciation of the short vowel sound greatly aids spelling. For example:

· for 'family' say /fam- i -lee/ not the usual /fam-lee/

In summary, the most effective and efficient way to learn spelling words is write each word 5 to 10 times (or more!) while saying the sounds and focusing on the specific spelling pattern used. It is simple, efficient and effective. Repeatedly writing the word while paying attention to and saying the sounds will help you learn spelling words.

To learn more about Right Track Reading Lessons & Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons and how you can use these effective reading programs to help your child or student build proficient phonologic processing and achieve reading and spelling success see Preview Right Track Reading Programs.

Additional free information on teaching students to read using effective direct systematic phonics instruction is located at Reading Information and Information & Resources for Teaching Reading pages of the Right Track Reading website.

This article was written by Miscese Gagen a mother with a passion for teaching children to read proficiently by using effective methods. She is also a successful reading tutor and author of the reading instructional programs Right Track Reading Lessons and Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons. The purpose of this article is to empower parents and teachers with information on teaching children how to read. We CAN improve reading proficiency, one student at a time! More information is located at www.righttrackreading.com ~ Copyright 2010-2013 Miscese R. Gagen

The tools to achieve reading success!

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Effective spelling instruction to help children and students learn how to spell

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Effective spelling instruction, information on teaching children how to spell and become good spellers

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The purpose of this case is to research a much more effective method in teaching children how to spell than the meaning emphasis method. The reason being that some children can become adept at spelling without being formally taught, while in contrast some with formal spelling/language foundations struggle with spelling.

Ehri, L. (1987). Learning to read and spell words. Journal of Literacy Research, 19(1), 5-31. doi:10.1080/10862968709547585

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How Spelling keeps Children from Learning

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How Spelling keeps Children from Learning

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This article contradicts the common understanding and usage of spelling. This stance stems from the fact that English is the most irregular language and the spelling of most english letters are random, similar, and confusing since children don't develop the ability to effectively utilize the english language till their elementary school years.

Vangelova, L. (2015, February 09). How Spelling Keeps Kids From Learning. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/how-the-english-language-is-holding-kids-back/385291/

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Mastering English requires abilities that most children don't develop until they're pre-teens.

Johnny in Topeka can't read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less to do with teaching style and quality than with language. Simply put, written English is great for puns but terrible for learning to read or write. It's like making children from around the world complete an obstacle course to fully participate in society but requiring the English-speaking participants to wear blindfolds.

Adults who have already mastered written English tend to forget about its many quirks. But consider this: English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. And not only can the same sounds be represented in different ways, but the same letter or letter combinations can also correspond to different sounds. For example, "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical. Meanwhile, "it" doesn't sound like the first syllable of "item," for instance, and "cough" doesn't rhyme with either "enough," "through," "furlough" or "bough." Even some identically spelled words, such as "tear," can be pronounced differently and mean different things.

Masha Bell, the vice chair of the English Spelling Society and author of the book Understanding English Spelling, analyzed the 7,000 most common English words and found that 60 percent of them had one or more unpredictably used letters. No one knows for sure, but the Spelling Society speculates that English may just be the world's most irregularly spelled language.

Mastering such a language takes a long time and requires abilities that most children don't develop until the middle or latter part of elementary school. Many children struggle to meet unrealistic expectations, get discouraged, and never achieve a high literacy level-all at an enormous cost to themselves and to society. To remedy this situation, would-be reformers have put forth proposed solutions ranging from simplifying the spelling to, most recently, harnessing technology to bypass it altogether.

English spelling wasn't always so convoluted; there was much more rhyme and reason to Old and even Middle English. But the spoken language has evolved, as all languages are wont to do: Pronunciations have changed and foreign words have been introduced, sometimes retaining the spelling conventions of their original languages.

Written English has also evolved-but mostly in ways unrelated to the changes in the spoken language, thanks in part to shenanigans and human error. The first English printing press, in the 15th century, was operated by Belgians who didn't know the language and made numerous spelling errors (such as "busy" in place of "bisy"). And because they were paid by the line, they sometimes padded words with extra letters; "frend," for example, became "friend." In the next century, other non-English speakers in continental Europe printed the first English Bibles, introducing yet more errors. Worse, those Bibles were then copied, and the writing became increasingly corrupted with each subsequent rendition. English spelling became a chaotic mess, and successful attempts to simplify the spelling after that were offset by events that made the language harder to learn, such as the inclusion of many alternate spellings in Samuel Johnson's influential English dictionary. Unlike many other languages, English spelling was never reformed to eliminate the incongruities. In a sense, English speakers now talk in one language but write a different one.

As a result, there's no systematic way to learn to read or write modern English-people have to memorize the spelling of thousands of individual words, file them away in their mental databases, and retrieve them when needed. A small percentage of people excel at this skill, but for most children in English-speaking countries, learning to read and write their native language is a laborious and time-consuming exercise.
English speakers now talk in one language but write a different one.
By contrast, languages such as Finnish and Korean have very regular spelling systems; rules govern the way words are written, with few exceptions. Finnish also has the added bonus of a nearly one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, meaning fewer rules to learn. So after Finnish children learn their alphabet, learning to read is pretty straightforward-they can read well within three months of starting formal learning, Bell says. And it's not just Finnish- and Korean-speaking children who are at a significant advantage: A 2003 study found that English-speaking children typically needed about three years to master the basics of reading and writing, whereas their counterparts in most European countries needed a year or less.

Moreover, English-speaking children then spend years progressing through different reading levels and mastering the spelling of more and more words. That means it typically takes English-speaking children at least 10 years to become moderately proficient spellers-memorizing about 400 new words per year-and because they forget and have to revise many of the spellings they've previously learned, "learning to spell is a never-ending chore," Bell says.

On the other hand, the American concept of "reading level" doesn't even exist in countries with more regular spelling systems. In those countries, children become faster readers as they recognize more and more words by sight, Bell says, but they don't need to have an idea of how a word sounds before they can read. The same goes for writing: In countries like Finland, children "continue to improve their vocabulary and use of language, but because they spell by rules rather than imprinting the right look of words on their brains, they can spell any word, regardless of whether they have met it before or not," she says. The speakers of slightly more irregular languages such as Spanish, for instance, still need a small fraction of the time to memorize the exceptions in those languages compared to English.

That's bad news for English-speaking societies, which represent about 6 percent of the world's population. First of all, the amount of time and energy devoted to learning to read and write could have been spent learning other things. Then there's the failure rate-the number of people who never become fully literate in the language. "One predictable consequence of any difficult-to-master system is a higher failure rate," Bell writes on her website. "Skills that require a special aptitude are learned well by only a few. With perseverance, many others can become quite good at them, too, but a substantial number never get beyond the basics, no matter how hard they try." (People with certain learning disabilities struggle even more: A 2001 study found that people with dyslexia have greater problems with English than with languages with more regular orthographies.)

That wouldn't matter so much if we were talking about something recreational, such as juggling. But literacy is integral to modern societies. Schools have consequently endeavored to teach children how to read and write at younger and younger ages, but Bell says that's problematic because children mature and learn at very different rates. It also steals time away from more developmentally appropriate activities for young children.

There's a spill-over effect, too: Being judged for not being adept at spelling can undermine children's self-confidence, lead people to give up on reading, and ultimately restrict their overall academic achievement and employment prospects. Ultimately, about one out of every five English speakers are functionally illiterate, meaning they "cannot read or write well enough for everyday literacy needs," Bell said. Maybe they've learned enough to cope with simple items such as menus-but they still struggle with deciphering lengthy prose passages and reading important documents such as medicine warnings.

There are other societal and economic costs as well, including public welfare for impoverished adults who are set back by functional illiteracy; three-quarters of welfare recipients fall into this category. All in all, according to the Literacy Project Foundation, illiteracy costs American taxpayers about $20 billion a year.
The amount of time and energy devoted to learning to read and write could have been spent learning other things.
A number of individuals, some of them joining forces through groups such as the U.K.-based English Spelling Society and the American Literacy Council, have been trying to alter this picture for years. But various proposals for spelling reform-with names such as Neu Speling or NuEnglish-have, for a variety of reasons, failed to take off. People who have already mastered written English are reluctant to invest time in learning a new spelling system-and many of those who haven't mastered it are loath to admit it, having internalized the message that it's a personal failing. Defenders of the status quo also maintain that today's written English is worth preserving-it's like the drafty old house that requires a lot of work but has history and character.

Bell doesn't believe a total overhaul of the language is needed; rather, she says a good "tidying" will suffice while ensuring that nearly 600 years' worth of modern English literature remains accessible. She advocates tweaking the 2,828 most-common irregularly spelled words to align them to conform with the main English spelling patterns.

In a sense, the simplified spellings people employ in text messages ("R u coming?") are like an ad hoc, grassroots version of spelling reform. But whether such spellings will become standard English remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, engineer and applied linguist Dmitry Orlov has come up with another solution: Eliminate the need to learn English spelling, temporarily if not permanently. The human brain is primed to memorize groups of speech sounds, not sequences of letters, he says. With this in mind, he developed his own writing system, Unspell, which is more or less a phonetic rendition of spoken English. It treats words as sequences of sounds rather than sequences of letters, so what you see is what you get: How a word is written is how it's pronounced, and vice versa.

Unspell has 13 basic symbols that also come in elongated versions; if needed, they can also be embellished by a voicing mark that looks like the accent mark in Spanish and/or a bar that means "say the sound with your mouth open wider." There is one distinct way to represent each of the 38 English sounds that Orlov says are needed to distinguish the meanings of words. Unspell is available in two versions to account for additional differences between North American and British English; the white paper goes into detail about how other complexities such as homonyms and homographs are handled.

Orlov also took care to design the symbols in a way he hopes will minimize difficulties for people with dyslexia and certain other visual or motor impairments-there are no loops or symbols that are flipped versions of other symbols, for instance.

A beginning reader should be able to learn to read sentences in Unspell in just a few months, Orlov says. He recently published an Unspell primer with exercises and puzzles, and has begun rolling out Unspelled versions of classic children's books such as Tom Sawyer. He eventually plans to publish Unspelled versions of all the titles in Project Gutenberg.

Educators questioned about Unspell say they're intrigued but want to see how the theory plays out in practice. Orlov has informally tested it with a handful of people and plans to pilot it among other students in the near future. In the meantime, he adds, the primer has sold hundreds of copies since he made it available in late 2014; as far as he can tell, most of the buyers have been parents whose children are struggling with reading.

He doesn't expect Unspell to completely replace "spelled English" for most people. Rather, he views it as an accessible literacy training ground for children, before they learn to read and write conventional English. (This is akin to the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, he says, which also require a lot of memorization and are initially taught using simplified scripts.) "Teach [children] to read a simple system," he says, "and then they can learn a complicated one by themselves" when they are intellectually ready, typically between the ages of eight and 10. Just as importantly, at that stage, they would approach the task from the vantage point of literate, empowered persons who are "already fluent in English."

Orlov also expects Unspell to help foreign-born adults who are learning English pronunciation, as well as adult native speakers who struggle with reading or writing. He plans to introduce an app that will allow people to snap a picture of English text with a smartphone and have it "unspelled" on the fly (another app will translate in the other direction), and a browser plug-in that can Unspell anything on the Internet. To help with writing, people will be able to type words the way they sound, and the software will show the word or words that correspond to that sound, with cues regarding meanings if there are any ambiguities. In an ideal world, Orlov also envisions Unspell appearing on important signs, alongside Braille, as an accessibility requirement.

But he says technologists should always be prepared for their inventions to be taken in unexpected directions. He's already heard reports of one such application: Children are using Unspell to exchange notes their teachers can't decipher.

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Mastering English requires abilities that most children don't develop until they're pre-teens.

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Examination of the Spelling Skills of MS students who are D/HOH

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Examination of the Spelling Skills of MS students who are D/HOH

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This article examine the spelling habits and ability of students who shows a major deficit in their phonological, morphological and semantic knowledge. The article isn't conclusive but it encourages future investigations that look at the spelling patterns of different type of writings.

Bowers, L., McCarthy, J. H., Schwarz, L., Dostal, H., & Wolbers, K. (2014). Examination of the Spelling Skills of Middle School Students Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Examination of the Spelling Skills of Middle School Students Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, 114(1), 29-54. Retrieved June 6, 17.

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The purpose of this journal is to express the concerns of parents and educators on the effect of standardized high stake testing on children, with no regards to any developmental delays or external factors that might influence a child. The article agrees that the early years are the most cruicial for it pays an important role in a child's overall academic development.

Guddemi, M., Sambrook, A., Wells, S., Randel, B., Fite, K., Selva, G., & Gagnon, K. (2014). Arnold Gesell’s Developmental Assessment Revalidation Substantiates Child-Oriented Curriculum. SAGE Open,4(2), 215824401452891. doi:10.1177/2158244014528918

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SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

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Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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The article have a strong stance on formative assessment and how it make teachers better. The author explained that following our guts and assumption of students comprehension isn't always accurate. Formative assessment is done as children are learning while summative assessment is given at the end.

@coolcatteacher, V. D. (2015, January 15). Fantastic, Fast Formative Assessment Tools. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-fast-formative-assessment-tools-vicki-davis

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Classroom Management: 6 Authentic Assessment Tools

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Classroom Management: 6 Authentic Assessment Tools

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The main purpose of these article is not to divert form the usual prescriptive classroom management but to provide 6 new possible alternatives that measures a child results while leveraging learning.

Classroom Management: 6 Authentic Assessment Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://www.teachhub.com/classroom-management-6-authentic-assessment-tools

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Assessments have become a critical piece to education reform. To prepare students well for college and career means they must deeply learn the material and its application to their lives and future learning. That means using classroom management skills to assess student knowledge authentically and accountably.

This doesn't stop with classroom management activities like quizzes, tests, and memorizing facts. Those approaches may be prescriptive, but they don't measure results in a way that leverages learning. Good assessments should verify that:

Students have unpacked a lesson and applied it rigorously.

Students have connected lessons to other learning and applied it to their lives.

Students take responsibility for their learning by embracing deep learning.

Students think creatively with their new information.

Lessons are scalable and dependent upon each child's learning style.

Students are stakeholders in this effort, not passive consumers.

A well-formed assessment achieves these six characteristics constructively. It's not always measured by a grade, as is common in summative assessments. Sometimes it derives evidence of learning from anecdotal observation, watching students apply prior learning, working in groups, or participating in classroom discussions.

Thanks to technology, there are lots of fun and effective ways to assess learning in ways that transform your classroom. Here are seven ideas:

Polls are quick ways to assess student understanding of the goal of your daily teaching. They measure student learning as much as lesson effectiveness. Polls are fast - three to five minutes - and are anonymously graded and shared immediately with students. They let everyone know if the big idea of the lesson is understood and if the essential questions have been answered.

These can be graded, but are usually used formatively, to determine organic class knowledge before moving on to other topics.
Tools: Socrative, PollDaddy, Google Forms
Time: A few minutes
Method: Formative assessment
Warmups and Exit Tickets
Tools: Twitter, a poll, Padlet collaborative wall, blog comments, Google Forms, a Discussion Board, ExitTicket.
Time: A few minutes
Method: Formative assessment
Warmups are given at the beginning of class to measure what students remember from prior lessons or know about a subject before jumping into a unit. They inform teachers how to optimize time by teaching what students need to learn, not wasting time on what students already know. They are a couple of minutes, can be delivered via a discussion board, blog comments, a Google Form, or many other methods.

Exit tickets are similar, but assess what students learned during the lesson. In this way, teachers know if they should review material, find a different approach to teaching a topic, or students are ready to move on. Like warmups, exit tickets are a few minutes, and delivered in a wide variety of creative methods.

Quick Quizzes
Tools: Jeopardy! template, Hollywood Squares template, Mind n Mettle
Time: 30 minutes
Method: Summative assessment
These are one or two question checks during class to measure understanding. They are either delivered at an assigned time during class (where everyone participates at once) or are questions students answer when they gain that knowledge from a lesson. Both approaches are a great way for a teacher to determine if she has explained a topic clearly enough that students have a useful understanding of it.

A nice by-product of letting students answer the questions when they're ready is you may find they get a topic much faster than you expect. That means you know when to move on to more challenging information.

Game Shows
Time: 10-15 minutes
Method: Formative assessment
Team students up and give them study materials and prep time as a group. This may be 15 minutes or an entire class -- you decide. Encourage them to strategize how to work best as a team. For example, they may decide to assign experts on topics or all be generalists. They may also select a captain, depending upon what type of game show is being played.
What do you use to organically assess student learning?
When prep time is completed, review the rules of the gameshow. Rules will differ depending upon which game show you select. Then, get started! They'll think it's a game. You'll see how much they really know on a subject.

Virtual Wall

Ask students a question and have them add their answer to a virtual wall.

Virtual walls are also great ideas for reviewing a subject prior to a summative assessment. Have each student post an important idea they got from the unit with significant required details.

Brainstorm

Create a group mindmap to evaluate what the class knows on the subject. This is well-suited to informing you what the class as a whole understands from your teaching, but also creates an excellent study guide for students.

For older students, you can use a screenshare free app like Join.Me for a group edit of your screen.

Differentiation

Ask students to select a tool you've used in class to share their understanding of a topic. This can be visually, orally, written, or artistically. It can use screencast programs, word processing, storytelling tools, or another that they are familiar with. They must select a tool they know how to use (because this isn't the time to learn new ones) and it must be completed in a specified amount of time. It can be done individually or in groups.

Assessments that work best are those that are fresh and new to students, requiring they think critically and creatively as they share knowledge.

For more assessment ideas, check Iowa State University's table of assessment tools (with lots of comparative information). Also, Education.com has a good discussion on the importance of assessment.

has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor/author of dozens of tech ed resources including a K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and dozens of books on how to integrate technology into education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, a tech ed columnist for , and a weekly contributor to . You can find her resources at

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Classroom Management: 6 Authentic Assessment Tools

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Assessments have become a critical piece to education reform. To prepare students well for college and career means they must deeply learn the material and its application to their lives and future learning. That means using classroom management skills to assess student knowledge authentically and accountably.

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Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom

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Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom

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This article explains the pros and cons of Summative Assessment in the classroom. The authors explained why both are important tools in information gathering.

Garrison, C., & Ehringhaus, M. (n.d.). Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom. Association for Middle Level Education. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from https://www.amle.org/portals/0/pdf/articles/Formative_Assessment_Article_Aug2013.pdf.

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Very informative. The article suggest that writing is becoming more integrated in every day subjects. If teaching Mathematic for example, students may be asked to solve a math problem by explaining their answer in writing.

10 Tips to Help Build Your Child's Writing Skills. (2014, July 23). Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://www.sylvanlearning.com/blog/index.php/10-tips-help-build-childs-writing-skills/

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Writing helps communicate thoughts, complete tasks and demonstrate the mastery of a skill. It is an integral part of every elementary school student's education. In fact, with the adoption of the Common Core Standards, students are using their writing skills even more than before across the curriculum. No longer is writing taught as a stand-alone topic; rather, it is now integrated into all core academic areas. Here are some examples of where your child may encounter writing tasks:

Students may be given a math problem and they are expected to explain in writing how they solved it.

Science tests may involve a few multiple choice questions followed by a two-page essay question.

During reading instruction, students may be asked to look back into the text and use specific details from the passage to support their reading comprehension writing assignment.

Writing is not an easy task for all students. For many struggling writers, these assignments and assessments may leave students frustrated and discouraged. It is challenging to put thoughts into words on a page in an organized manner. Parents can support and enrich their children's writing skills in the home environment. This support may help make the task of writing easier and more enjoyable for students.
Tips for Building Writing Skills at Home:
1. Provide a variety of materials for writing. Fun pens and pretty papers can be a great motivational tool.

2. Create a space in your home for writing that is free from distractions.

3. Choose strong vocabulary words to learn at home for the week. Use these words in your daily oral vocabulary and written work. Words such as "obstacles" and "curious" are a great start. See if your child can use them both in a written story.

4. Integrate core academic area writing at home. Do a science project together and then write about the process or results.

5. Encourage writing for a variety of purposes. Your child could make a shopping list, write a fictional story or send a letter.

6. Use technology to improve writing. Encourage your child to send an e-mail to a friend or publish a story online with a program such as Little Bird Tales.

7. Allow your child to observe you writing on your own. Be a good role model and smile while you are doing it, too! Take time to share your writing with him or her and talk about how you use writing in your personal and professional life. Show a variety of different written work such as a written letter, business communication or journal page.

8. Connect writing with your child's passion. If your son is interested in the Magic Tree House series of books, encourage him to write a letter to Mary Pope Osborne. If your daughter is interested in mysteries, have her create a scavenger hunt with written clues to find a hidden treasure.

9. Celebrate writing in a variety of ways. You could:

- Host a family "open mic" night once a month and take turns reading poems or stories written by family members out loud.

- Tape completed stories to the refrigerator.

- Do a happy dance together with your child when a completed writing project comes home from school with a positive note.

10. Last, but not least, it is important to provide time to write daily. In order for writing skills to improve, students must spend time writing. Add it to your family's daily routine and build it into the schedule. This will help your writer to practice and gain confidence in his or her writing.

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10 Tips to Help Build Your Child's Writing Skills - Sylvan Learning Blog

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Writing helps communicate thoughts, complete tasks and demonstrate the mastery of a skill. It is an integral part of every elementary school student's education. In fact, with the adoption of the Common Core Standards, students are using their writing skills even more than before across the curriculum.

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The article provide various steps/tips children can use to improve their handwriting. It also address a number of factors that could influence a person's handwriting.

Harron, W. (Ed.). (2014, March). Five Steps to Better Handwriting. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/handwriting.html#

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Writing is a skill you learn over time. Find out how your body and mind does this complicated task and how to get better at it.

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Examining Student Writing Proficiencies Across Genres

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Examining Student Writing Proficiencies Across Genres

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This is a 5 week study that focuses on both taught and untaught genres of writing. The researchers wanted to see how children retainment translate during real time writing activities.

Dostal, H. M., & Wolbers, K. A. (2016). Examining Student Writing Proficiencies Across Genres: Results of an Intervention Study†. Deafness & Education International, 18(3), 159-169. doi:10.1080/14643154.2016.1230415

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The Effect of Topic Selection on EFL students writing performance

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The Effect of Topic Selection on EFL students writing performance

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The journal examines how topic selection affect student performance in the classroom. The article examines the difference between self selected topics and teacher selected topic on a case study of 30 people.

Bonyadi, A. (2014). The Effect of Topic Selection on EFL Students’ Writing Performance. SAGE Open, 4(3), 215824401454717. doi:10.1177/2158244014547176