Guest blog post from, Reading & Other Learning Disabilities: A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Many children with reading disabilities have poor memories. Fortunately, teachers can do a great deal to improve the memory of these children, which, in turn, improves their learning. To do this, teachers must first capture and then keep the children's attention. They must then focus instruction on the acronym REMOS: Repeat It, Elaborate or Explain it, Make it Meaningful, Organize it, and engage in Spaced or Distributed Practice.

In practical terms, the teacher must get the children to:

Attend to What’s Important. Teachers have a good chance of capturing and keeping children’s attention if they're enthusiastic about what they're teaching, make it interesting, use novelty, use words the children can understand, use pictures or multimedia to illustrate what they want remembered, and assign materials the children can read comfortably.

To keep the attention of children with reading disabilities during a lecture, teachers should break the lecture into eight to ten minute blocks. Each block should focus on one concept; the first few minutes should emphasize the main point; the next few minutes should elaborate on it. After each block, the children should take a break. During the break, the teacher might tell a story to illustrate the major concept, or the children might engage in a short group activity, like scripting a podcast, or individually, they might spend five minutes illustrating the major concept. They might even spend a few minutes exercising lightly. To learn more about structuring a lecture to keep a class’s attention, read Brain Rules. In this enlightening book, John Medina describes how and why he divides his lectures into ten-minute blocks.

Repeat It. If you want to remember something, repeat it or lose it. Teachers need to structure their lessons so children with reading disabilities have many opportunities to repeat and practice what they need to remember. Repeat does not mean saying it silently one or two times. If it's important, children should say it six or seven times, maybe twelve to sixteen times, maybe seventeen to umpteen times. However, asking children to repeat what they don't understand often benefits no one. They quickly forget what's not understood, what's not meaningful to them. Elaboration can make things meaningful.

Elaborate on It. To say it another way, teachers should create lots of opportunities for children to talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it. Children should discuss it. If it’s controversial, they might switch between the “pro” and “con” positions. Talk is important, but it should be meaningful. The more meaningful something is, the more likely it will be remembered.

Make It Meaningful. The more children understand something, the more likely they'll remember it. Teachers can give meaning to an abstract concept by helping children relate it to their lives. To reinforce and extend the meaning of the word practical, the teacher might begin a discussion by asking, “So in your house or near it, what do people do that's practical? What makes it practical? After the discussion, the teacher might ask the children to “take five minutes to draw a picture of someone doing something practical and something impractical.” To make practical even more meaningful, she can have the children share their pictures: “Show your pictures to your neighbor. Tell your neighbor what was practical and impractical in your picture. And tell them why it was practical and impractical.”

Organize the Information. When teachers help children with reading disabilities to organize information—in ways the children find meaningful—they'll remember the information better than if it's random or unorganized. Here's a list of ten words: pineapple, collie, cantaloupe, chihuahua, bulldog, apple, grape, terrier, boxer, peach. If children try to remember all the words as one list, they'll forget most of them in a week. If they organize the words into the categories of dogs and fruit, they'll remember many more of them. Even their mistakes will fall into the two groups: dogs and fruit. Try it.

The teacher must also:

Schedule Spaced or Distributed Practice. When referring to children with reading disabilities, spaced or distributed practice refers to assessing the effects of instruction a day or two after the initial instruction and then re-teaching children what they didn't remember or master. For maximum effect, teachers should repeat the process some three to four weeks later. They should assess what was taught and re-teach what was forgotten. This can have a profound effect on the children’s memory and application of skills.

The good news about gaining and maintaining children's attention and using REMOS is that the principles are straightforward. Teachers can use them—easily. So can parents.

Resources
Medina, J. (2009). Brain rules. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond www.reading2008.com
A version of this column was originally published by Howard Margolis, Ed.D. on www.reading2008.com.  Howard is also co-author of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds.

As the school year ends, we know most teachers are excited for a break. There will be a point where reflection is necessary to evaluate how the year went and what to do differently for next year. We do understand, however, that at this point you are just grateful you survived!

When you are ready to reflect and evaluate, we would like to offer a few suggestions that might be helpful for teaching reading in years to come. When evaluating your teaching experience over the past school year, here are some questions to consider:

• How do you feel your students did in regards to reading? 
• Did you feel like you knew how to reach all of your students, even those that had a difficulty with reading? 
• Were you frustrated or overwhelmed at any point with your instruction?
• Did you ever question whether your teaching was effective? 
• Did you feel like you knew specifically how to teach reading?

If you aren’t satisfied with your response to these questions, you are not alone. Beginning reading instruction is one of the most difficult subjects to teach. Some reasons for this include:

1. Since learning to read is an automatic process for most, it is difficult to instruct others in a step-by-step approach to learning to read.

Most people remember reading as children, but few remember specifically how they learned to read. This is because, for most, learning to read is an automatic process. Because we do not remember how we learned to read, it is difficult to explain to others how to develop the skill.

2. The English language has a complicated structure.

We probably understand basic rules, like i before e except after c, and know the phonemes, such as ch says /ch/. However, there is usually very little that we can explain about the structure of our language. 

3. There are several theories and arguments as to what is the most effective type of reading instruction.

Since it is difficult to remember how we learned to read, it is also difficult for us to know how to teach someone else to read. Over the years researchers have studied several different methods for approaching reading instruction, often with contradictory results. This is because for around 70% of students, they learn to read regardless of the reading instruction they receive. The type of reading instruction used is primarily important for the 30% of students that do not automatically learn to read. Research has proven these students must be taught to read systematically and explicitly. Teachers must be trained in how to do this to be effective and to help all students become efficient readers.

Although systematic and explicit reading instruction is only necessary for struggling students, it is beneficial to all students, even automatic readers. A systematic, explicit phonics program provides students with the “why” behind our language. It empowers them with useful reading strategies to handle unfamiliar words rather than forcing them to guess and memorize the word for future use.

SOLUTION

To help reading teachers improve reading instruction to help all students, not just 70% of their students, Reading Horizons offers online teacher training. Every teacher who participates in this online teacher training over the summer could go back to school in the fall ready to help all of their students effectively gain reading skills.

Sign up for a Free 30-day Trial: Reading Horizons Online Training for Reading Teachers

I appreciate all of the activity on our company blog over the past few months. This is a spectacular forum for communicating with dedicated reading teachers and concerned citizens on a more informal basis. I've been thinking a lot lately about all of the changing tides that we experience in education on a monthly and yearly basis. It's very difficult to ever "hang your hat" on anything because of constantly changing legislation, research, and techniques. I am very proud to work for a company that has been rock solid in its stance on the best strategies for teaching reading for over 25 years. Flash back just 10 years ago and it was a battle to convince many educators that phonics was an important part of any reading curriculum.

Fortunately the pendulum has swung in the direction of proven teaching techniques for now, making that battle easier for the time being. It should be noted though that even when phonics was a byword in many schools we were advocating its use and publishing the same reading program that we publish today. Reading Horizons and Discover Intensive Phonics have been a "constant" in the sea of change that we call "education reading programs" and techniques for teaching reading. Furthermore I can promise you that we will still be teaching this way even if (and I pray this doesn't ever happen) the pendulum swings back the other way.

Be sure to continue to come back to our blog for daily updates or subscribe to our RSS feed for automatic updates from Reading Horizons blog.

With the right reading instruction it is possible for almost anyone to learn to read- regardless of age. These 3 stories reveal it is possible for adults to learn to read despite past experiences and background.

Story #1: Jahara

Earlier this week the New York Times published an article about the adult reading program at the New York Public Library. The article highlighted one adult’s journey of learning to read as an adult immigrant to New York City from his farming village in Gambia, Africa. Jahara came to America and as he gradually built a new life for himself, his reading difficulties continued to get in the way. He finally decided he needed to change his potential and started participating in the New York Public Library’s where a volunteer tutor helped him improve his reading skills. 

This article easily caught the attention of Reading Horizons, which supplies the adult reading program used at the New York Public Library. Reading Horizons products help teach reading to adults like the one in this article nationwide and worldwide. It’s exciting to read about someone’s life that has been dramatically improved by the reading program Reading Horizons works to develop and perfect.

Story #2: Tina

Tina moved to Canada in May of 2007, she was a single mom of 3 children and was struggling to afford a place to live and lacked literacy skills. She enrolled in an ESL reading program the following September and tells of her experience:

“…I started attending the ESL program at Northern Lakes College in La Crete. I completed the ESL program in January, and [will complete additional] courses in June.

I feel that I have learned many new things. I [had] never attended English classes before I came to Canada. In the Reading Horizons program, I tested [at] grade 11.3 after five weeks of [taking] the lessons, and I am very proud of myself.

Everyone has been very helpful here, including my teachers. I want to continue my education [next] September.”

Story #3: Larry

To read and view additional stories of adults that successfully learned to read click here.

Thank you all for your participation in “v5 in 5 Days.” I was very impressed by the comments and wish we could award a Software License to every participant. Reading the comments was very rewarding after seeing the hard work everyone in this office has put into this product release. To hear such positive feedback was truly gratifying.

I’d also like to thank our participants and all teachers for their efforts in helping struggling readers. It’s amazing to think that everyone who commented works with this problem daily. It’s a problem that is often neglected or ignored in mainstream society yet from my experiences with Reading Horizons, I have become very aware of society’s need to promote literacy. I’m excited for one of our participants to receive a Software License and look forward to it helping the students exposed to it. I hope all of our participants will be able to work with this program and see its impact on struggling readers.  Thanks again for your participation!

And the winner is....!