Assessing and Teaching Reading

By Kaila BarrettSPED 432

The Expanding Research Base in Reading

Basically what this is means is that there is continuous research being done

on base reading, and this means that people are looking for ways to help

expand reading and what needs to be taught when doing this. There are many successful programs that have worked in the past and even present but they are

trying to add to the research. The development of essential reading sills requires phonological reading, phonic

skills, fluency, and different comprehension strategies. There are a

lot of other skills that they take into consideration such as instructional

strategies, literacy/language experiences, and reading problems.

Components of Reading Instruction

There are five essential components of effective reading instruction and those are listed below.

Phonological Awareness Training

”Phonological awareness training was found to have potentially positive effects on communication/language competencies for children with learning disabilities in early

education settings.” This can include words, syllables, onsets, rimes and phonemes. I also believe that this is when the students know and understand that words/ language is made

up of sounds. Students should exhibit identify, hear, and manipulate these individual sounds in spoken words. Research I have found is controversial on this topic because some people

think it is extremely important where others don’t think that it is that important and that students can learn without it. I personally think it is important because this is when the

students can manipulate sounds. Some ways that I have found that can help with this is to scaffold blending and segmenting through explicit modeling, integrate letter and sound

correspondence once learners are proficient with auditory tasks, focus first on the auditory aspects of words, and to move from explicit to implicit segments of language. I think that if

you were to follow those it would honestly work great. I like the fact that focusing on the auditory aspects first because that is the actual sound of the letter or word.

Phonics InstructionThis begins when print is introduced and

paired with their corresponding sounds. In normal terms this is basically saying that

there is a relationship between letters and sounds. Through my experiences I have

found that some students really struggle in this area and teachers have to find a

different method of instruction. This is also normally when the students learn their

ABC’s and the sounds that go along with them. Through all of the reading I have done on phonics I have found out that

based on research systematic and explicit phonics instruction provides a lot of different opportunities to practice.

Phonics InstructionThere are six phonics instructional approaches to take into

consideration. • Analogy based phonics teaches students to decode

unfamiliar words. • Analytic phonics teaches students to analyze the letter

sounds relationships in known words to help with unfamiliar words.

• Embedded phonics teaches students letter sound relationships during the reading of text.

• Phonics through spelling teaches students to segment words and then write those sounds.

• Onset-rime phonics instruction teaches students to identify the sound of the letters before the first vowel.

• Synthetic phonics teaches students to convert letters into sounds and then blend them together.

I personally cannot explain how important phonics are for students. I teach a lesson during the day that usually has

phonic awareness tied into it. It is so important for students to learn and work at phonics because this will help make them successful when it comes to reading, writing, and

spelling.

Fluency Instruction

Fluency is the ability to read quickly but it being accurate and fluency is usually covered with phonemic awareness, letter naming, sound and letter associations, sight words and oral reading. I honestly thinking that rapid reading can predict the beginning

reading success with students. Some students get it right away and some students struggle a lot with this. I see this a lot working at the daycare as well as working in the

schools with kindergarteners and a lot of the students who are in special education lack the ability of accurate fluency skills. The rationale for fluency helps to promote

memory and applications. I believe that fluency and comprehension play corresponding roles with one another. This also brings up the topic of all of the different theories that go along with fluency some of the theories that I like the best are the sight

word efficiency because this is what I do every day with students. These people believe that sight words are a must know when it comes to fluency and I help student with that every day. Of course this isn’t the only theory out there but it is definitely my

favorite and I do agree with it!

Fluency InstructionThere are also different stages of fluency and these include:

• Prereading is when students focus more on the pictures, colors, and shapes of a book.

• Decoding is learning to read emphasis. In other words students learn to sound out words, learn consonants and vowels, they also blend words and divide words.

• Confirmation and fluency is reading to learn emphasis. The reader can is when they can read and their fluency increases greatly.

• Reading to learn is when the reader adds new sight words and vocabulary. They also learn to think and construct knowledge with words.

• Reading for multiple viewpoints is when the students adding new sight vocabulary and then they construct knowledge and words.

• Reading to construct new knowledge is basically the same thing as the last two, which is adding sight vocabulary and to construct knowledge using words.

This brings me to talk about the fluency rate and this is different for all students, some are fast and some are average and then the lower levels. There are different factors to take into consideration and those are reading genre, maturity level of the

reader, purpose of the reading, and the grade level. This is basically how many words correct per minute.

Vocabulary InstructionVocabulary is all the words that the student has learned and uses to communicate

effectively. There are different amounts of words that students should know at different levels and/or grades. This is one of the most important aspects and this is always why teachers teach spelling. Spelling teaches them to break down words,

spell them, and the reuse it in a sentence. This helps to build the students vocabulary. Vocabulary can be divided into many different categories but generally it

is divided into oral vocabulary and reading vocabulary. However, there is also the writing and listening portion, no matter what way the students learn it they soak it up like a sponge. I have learned a lot about vocabulary actually getting to work with a kindergarten class and most of their vocabulary is taught indirectly but there are

some cases where it is taught directly. I help the special education teachers in the morning helping teach sight words and no matter how many times you go over the same words the students learn. I have only worked with these students for a month and I have noticed a huge difference in some of the students. It makes everything worthwhile! Now because teachers cannot teach every single word some teachers

put words into categories that are important, difficult and useful words. The teachers teach them using that strategy. Students with learning disabilities, like I work with in

the mornings, have a harder time remembering and using these words, let along learning new ones. It is important to have repetition!

Comprehension Instruction

• This is a process that helps the students understand the words being read. This is one of the best definitions of comprehension because it explains it so perfectly because comprehension is how students read, this is what allows them to read. While I was researching I came across seven strategies to help students learn

reading comprehension and those include:• Comprehension monitoring is basically having the students either understand what

they’re reading or having them understand that they don’t understand it and then using a strategy to help fix that problem. When I think about this metacognition

always comes to my mind because it is thinking about thinking. • Cooperative learning is students working on defined reading in small groups or in partners. I think this works great when you can pair up a student in special education

with a peer who is above status it works in a peer tutoring way. • The uses of graphic and semantic organizers help the students with display and can

really help the visual learners. This also helps the students to see different relationships on paper rather than just thinking and talking about it.

Comprehension Instruction

• Question answering is when students answer questions asked by the teacher and this also includes the teacher giving the students feedback on their answers.

• Generating questions helps because the students can ask their own questions to the teacher before reading the book. When they have actually read the book the students will answer their own questions. I personally love this strategy because I use to do this all time in school and it helped me pay closer attention to what I

was reading because I didn’t want to have to go back and reread everything that I read the first time.

• Recognizing story starters, in my opinion is basically teaching the students story structure and then having them recognize this in a book.

• Summarizing is basically retelling what happened in the text but in a shorter version. The students should focus on telling important ideas and concepts in a

text. This helps teachers to determine if a student is understanding a book or not.

Comprehension Teaching• When teaching comprehension teachers need to

have strategies that teach it systematically and explicitly a couple of ways that I like the best are

to:• Model and explain metacognition.(I am a huge fan

of modeling!!!)• Have guided practice to guide students to assume

more responsibility.• Having the students predict what could happen in

a text.• Its also important that teachers should be aware

that they cant rely on one comprehension strategy. Teachers need to use a variety for the

students to learn.• Teaching comprehension in the context of academic areas can be effective some of the time but not always it just depends if the student has

appropriate language and reading skills.

Comprehension Instruction• There will always be a student who has a

harder time learning comprehension or who may even have a learning disability and it is important to keep in mind different strategies that may be more effective and some of those

include:• Having the students question what they read

and the story structure.• The combination of self-questioning and text

specific student enhances comprehension.• Teachers need to carefully design instruction

and include modeling(extremely important!), guidance, practice, and feedback.

• Direct instruction helps with positive outcomes which I have to agree with!

• Whole language interventions have the least positive outcomes.

Components of Evidence-Based Reading Instruction

ObjectivityWhat this basically means is that any educator would draw the same conclusions that they did the first time. This is important because it

shouldn’t matter who is giving the test, the same result should appear.

ValidityThis means that all of the evidence accurately reflects the strategies

that were being used. I think this is very important because if a strategy isnt working the evidence would show it.

ReliabilityThis means that the results will be consistent no matter the day or time.

I always tend to think of special education students and when they’re tested, usually the results are accurate no matter the time or day.

Components of Evidence-Based Reading Instruction

Systematic Data CollectionThis is when date is collected according to a specific design, this is basically

saying that there is a method to data collection. This is important especially in special education because there are so many different tests and assessments

that are done.

RefereedThis is when data has been approved for publication by independent

reviewers. I think that this is important because this is basically saying that the data is accurate.

Core Reading Program

A core reading program is an instructional too that teachers use to teach children to read. In other words the teachers use this to make

sure that the levels are being met at grade level standards. Core reading programs have been around for a while now and I personally

think they are great! I like to think of these programs as a base for reading. Other strategies can be used but the core program is the

main strategy.