As a teacher or reading specialist it is important to remember these tips when working with struggling readers. Feel free to add your own in the comment section!

Tip 1: Reinforce the positive aspects of students’ efforts.

Tip 2: Encourage students to outline their thoughts. It is important to get the main ideas down on paper without having to struggle with the details of spelling, punctuation, etc

Tip 3: K.I.S.S. Keep it simple sweetheart! Your students may do better with simple and concise directions for completing tasks.

Tip 4: Get creative! All children learn in highly individual ways. Children with learning disabilities simply process information differently.

Tip 5: Remember Orton-Gillingham principles help struggling readers flourish! Find an explicit, systematic phonics program.

Tip 6: Prioritize certain task components during a complex activity. For example, students can focus on using descriptive words in one assignment and in another, focus on using compound sentences.

Tip 7: Try to find books of interest for your students. They are more likely to focus for greater lengths of time on something that interests them.

Tip 8: Students with attention difficulties benefit from using a bookmark or other tool to help them track and keep their attention where they are reading.

Download a tracking bookmark for you to print and cut> (make sure you cut the window out of the center, that is where the text should be read.)

Tip 9: Have students dictate their ideas into a tape recorder and then listen and write them down later.

Tip 10: Remove “neatness” or “spelling” (or both) as grading criteria for some assignments, or design assignments to be evaluated on specific parts of the writing process.

Tip 11: Be patient and encourage students to be patient with themselves.

Special education and reading intervention can be enjoyable, rewarding and fun! Comment below and share your tips for 2011.

All he wanted to do was read his own mail. But Barry Lubic considered reading a near impossibility. That is, until he met Joan-Marie Mueller, the Literacy Program Director, at The Boca Raton Library in Florida.

Two years ago, Lubic suffered from an accidental electrocution closely followed by a stroke. After funding for transition services expired, Lubic found that he still couldn’t read. He started working with Mueller who introduced him to the Reading Horizons v5 software program. Mueller has never seen anyone progress as quickly as Barry. “It’s amazing what Barry has accomplished since June. The computer program is so multi-sensory that it was easy for him to grasp and retain decoding skills,” she said.

Mueller has been using the Reading Horizons methodology for the past 10 years and views the approach as “the light at the end of the tunnel for many struggling readers.” Barry is not only reading his mail, but also the NASCAR books that friends and family members have sent during his recovery. And what of Joan-Marie Mueller? Well, she continues to power the Sunshine State with her smile and her commitment to literacy in Boca Raton.

Sunday night I was relaxing at home, flipping through the T.V. channels and something caught my eye.  A&E’s new reality show Teach: Tony Danza follows sitcom start Tony Danza as he tries his hand and teaching English in the biggest public school in Philadelphia. The thing that caught my attention was his reaction to the students in his class who had reading disabilities.

From Mr. Danza’s perspective, letting a student go to resource to take a test would be isolating that student from the mainstream class.  He felt that the student was choosing to be lazy.  In this particular episode Mr. Danza gave his 10th grade class a test on the book, Of Mice and Men. Half the class (12 students) failed the test. Mr. Danza’s reaction was that the students aren’t reading the book and aren’t doing the work because they aren’t trying.  He said he did the same thing when he was in high school.

Tony was called in to the principals office and she informed him that BY LAW he is required to allow any student resource time when they request it. The principal also tried to help him understand that learning and reading disabilities are real and aren’t just something “lazy” kids make up.

A few things stood out to me in this episode.  One, I think that there is still that stigma in America when it come to reading disabilities. Some people still believe that if the student can just motivate themselves enough then they will love to read. It broke my heart to hear some of the students comment to the camera that they tried to read.  They said they read a page over and over and they still couldn’t comprehend what the text was saying.  They were putting forth the effort to read and they still struggled with comprehension. Much of the time poor reading comprehension originates with poor decoding skills.  For students with reading disabilities a program that is systematic and explicit instruction is crucial to improve their reading abilities.

The end of the episode showed his students left frustrated and Mr. Danza crying. I could tell he was at a loss for how to help the students. I think he was beginning to understand that he needed to change his mindset in order to reach his students. I am interested to see how the semester progresses.

In a recent interview in Parade magazine Tony Danza talks about the difficulties of being a teacher. “It’s tough—you’ve got kids who read at a third-grade level and others in the same room who read at an 11th-grade level. That’s what teachers are up against—not to mention the culture in general. As a teacher, you’re supposed to “model” things for the kids—show them the ways that education matters in the world. But where in their communities do they see that? ... I tell them, “If you have one person who’s committed to your education and your future, you’re very lucky.” A lot of these kids in public school don’t have that. They need to know that someone cares.There’s this story another teacher told me, about a big storm that comes and throws thousands of starfish onto the beach. The next day, they’re broiling in the sun, and a guy starts throwing them back into the ocean. Another guy comes along and says, “There’s thousands of them—how are you going to make any difference?” And the first guy picks up another starfish, throws it in, and says, “It made a difference to that one.”

Overall I think that Tony Danza has a good heart and really wants to help inner city students succeed.  I just hope he quickly understands that reading disabilities aren’t a made up excuse made by kids who didn’t want to read Of Mice and Men.

Please leave your comments about your perception of learning disabilities or the show Teach: Tony Danza.

Lately our company has been taking a new approach to solving problems. The new approach has derived from the problem solution advice found in Dale Carnegie’s book: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. When a problem arises the initial response should not be to go to someone else for a solution. The problem should be analyzed to discover:

1.    Why is this a problem?
2.    What are the possible solutions to this problem?
3.    What is the best solution of the options?

This process helps us take more responsibility for the problems we face in our work and usually produces the best solution for the problem.  As with most companies, Reading Horizons works to solve a problem for its consumer (teachers and parents): how to properly teach struggling readers and provide them with success in reading. We work to solve this problem by offering manuals for reading instruction, software to encourage independent learning, and professional development for reading teachers.

In a recent interview with EdWeek, Dr. Richard Allington, education professor at the University of Tennessee and prevalent early literacy expert and author, answered the questions that must be asked to properly solve the problems facing reading instructors:

Why is it difficult to provide proper reading instruction for students?

“It’s not a question that we don’t know what to do. It’s a question of having the will to develop full literacy in this country, and to organize schools and allocate money in ways that would allow us to do that.”

“Unfortunately, we have good evidence that a lot of kindergarten and 1st grade teachers in this country are just not very skilled in teaching reading. And a lot of them also assume that if a kid is struggling and is way behind in reading, he must have some neurological problem, and therefore it’s not their job to teach him…”

“Teachers know who needs help. If they don’t know, they shouldn’t be teaching… They just don’t know what to do with a kid who’s in trouble.”

What are the possible solutions to providing proper reading instruction for students?

“We have studies involving multiple school districts and hundreds or thousands of kids demonstrating that, with quality instruction and intervention, 98 percent of all kids can be reading at grade level by the end of 1st or 2nd grade.”

“RTI [Response to Intervention] works best if it’s started in kindergarten and 1st grade—we know how to solve those problems.”

“…You can do a lot by strengthening instruction.”

Reading Horizons best solution for providing proper reading instruction for students:

Reading Horizons program has been used extensively as a Response to Intervention (RTI) for struggling readers. I have agreed since the beginning of my experiences with Reading Horizons that it would be beneficial to use such a reading program as the core reading curriculum for beginning readers grades kindergarten to 2nd grade.  I know I would understand language much better if I was taught with Reading Horizons method and other intensive phonics programs.

In order to help teachers know  how to teach reading in the way that is most beneficial for struggling readers Reading Horizons offers professional development to reading instructors.  For more information on Reading Horizons Professional Development program click here.

Three years of long hours, new ideas, and improvements is paying off: Reading Horizons finally gets to celebrate the release of the NEW Reading Horizons v5 software! This post is a continuation of a 5 day post series focusing on 5 different features of Reading Horizons v5 software.

Day 1: Lessons
Day 2: Library
Day 3: Pronunciation Proficiency Tool
Day 4: Vocabulary Tool
Day 5: Administration System

To ensure that students are provided with sufficient practice with Reading Horizons v5 unique marking system, the new software provides a vocabulary database of over 10,000 terms.  This extensive list helps students develop vocabulary while practicing decoding skills. The Vocabulary tool may be used at any time during the program and contains vocabulary relating to the skills that are being taught in the lessons.

Reading Horizons v5 Vocabulary Lesson Manager

The Vocabulary Tool relies on the goal of Reading Horizons v5 being more student-focused.  The program insures student improvement by adjusting to student performance.  The number of terms the student must complete in this section is determined by student performance on the lesson material of Reading Horizons v5 software. Students who perform poorly in the adjoining lesson will be required to complete additional vocabulary terms. Administrators can also adjust settings to determine the number of terms a student must complete.  
The student experience in the Vocabulary section includes: hearing each word pronounced, defined, and used in context sentences; seeing alternative forms of the word shown, with an additional sentence showing that term used in context; and seeing several words illustrated with graphics.

Words are organized as:

• High Frequency Words
• More Words
• Nonsense Words
• English for Special Purposes Words (optional)

Terms fall into 5 categories:

• School
• Business
• Medicine
• Hospitality
• Travel

In order to pass of vocabulary terms students must properly decode the number of words they are assigned using Reading Horizons marking system. This helps students become familiar with likely and unlikely sequences of letters and learn how to break words down into syllables.

This is an example of the material provided for each term in the Vocabulary section of Reading Horizons v5

Students also have the option to record themselves pronouncing the term and compare their pronunciation to the narrator’s. This option is especially beneficial to ELL (English Language Learners) students. To further assist ELL students, administrators can also enable foreign language support in this section.

As students learn to enjoy increasing their vocabulary they can also use the search feature to find words in the database that interest them. This will help students expand their vocabulary and understand how words are decoded.

Video

The following video of Reading Horizons Reading Specialist, Shantell Berrett, discusses the teacher feedback she has received on the vocabulary component of the new Reading Horizons v5 Software:



Question

Answer the following question in the comment section of this blog:

In the video clip Shantell Berret discussed the Vocabulary Tool on the new Reading Horizons v5 software. From reading this post, how do you think this tool will most benefit struggling readers?

Be sure to visit the blog again tomorrow to learn more about the improved Administration System of Reading Horizons v5. The Administration System further adds to the concept of creating a more student-focused reading program.

Students can also build their vocabulary through the use of Reading Horizons, Lemons for Literacy Vocabulary Game: Lemons for Literacy