Reading Problems Do Not Just Go Away

During the past few years, there has been a significant effort, both within schools and throughout the community at large, to draw attention to the critical importance (and benefit) of effective reading instruction, especially for students in the early school years. It is also common knowledge that, in the vast majority of schools throughout the country, students "learn to read" during the early grades and are then expected to "read to learn" as they transition into the middle and high school years. The problem remains that too many children, particularly those with learning disabilities, do not learn to read proficiently in the primary grades. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores over the past few years suggest that almost 40% of fourth grade students read below the "basic level" (defined as "partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade"). And if these students do not learn to read at or close to grade level by the end of elementary school, they enter the secondary grades unable to succeed in a challenging high school curriculum, and unfortunately, rarely catch up by the time they are ready to graduate.

The Implications of Reading Failure

Today's teenagers are entering an adult world where reading and writing are essential skills for independence and success. High levels of literacy are needed for most jobs and reading skill is almost a prerequisite for advancement in many employment situations. Reading proficiency is also needed to run households, participate in community activities and in so many other ways, conduct activities of daily living. In a complex and sometimes dangerous world, the ability to read is crucial. And adolescents with low literacy skills are especially vulnerable for underachievement, under-employment and threats to personal safety.

Let's also not forget that many of these adolescents and young adults are life-long remedial readers, all too familiar with the cycle of failure that more often than not typifies their earlier school years. Some have been exposed to a number of different instructional programs that were meant to help them 'catch up' and others have had little or no formal instruction since the third or fourth grade when 'teaching reading' fell off their teachers' radar screens as an educational priority. The result of many years of frustration and struggle in reading is a student who gains little enjoyment from literacy activities, who more often than not also struggles with writing and spelling, reads slowly and with poor understanding, and who does everything possible to avoid tasks that involve reading.

Approaches to Improve Reading for Adolescents

While there are many instructional models available to help students in the high school years to become more efficient and skilled readers, research conducted specifically with this age group suggests that four factors contribute significantly to building reading proficiency. Students need to be:

• motivated to read and improve their skills: it is often very difficult for students to admit their weaknesses and sustain positive effort, even with support, given ingrained feelings of embarrassment and hopelessness
• able to decode print: this is increasingly difficult for many students in part due to their having made incorrect assumptions about the alphabetic principle and how letters and sounds work; for others, decoding skills are so slow and labored that the mechanics of decoding interferes with understanding what is being read
• able to comprehend language: students whose reading is not "automatic" and fluid often need to focus their efforts on sounding-out words or guessing at words, making it all the more difficult to check their understanding of the material as they read
• able to seek information and formulate personal responses to questions: efficient readers employ a number of different strategies to validate the assumptions they made about material being read

Two successful models that have incorporated these four features are described below.

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)

This model was designed specifically for students with learning disabilities and students who are at risk of reading failure. It calls for the teacher to introduce a set of four distinct strategies to the class and to introduce and review any new vocabulary that students will encounter that they might not be able to figure out during group activities and instruction. Once the teacher introduces the material to be read to the entire class, the students take charge and the teacher provides assistance and support as needed, and then oversees a brief wrap-up activity at the end of each lesson.

The strategies used in the CSR model are:

• Preview (students brainstorm about the topic and predict what will be learned before starting to read)
• Click and Clunk (students identify parts of a passage that are hard to understand, and use four "fix-up" strategies)
• Get the Gist (students identify the most important information in a passage)
• Wrap Up (students ask and answer questions that demonstrate understanding as a way to review what was learned)

In this model, students are assigned different cooperative group roles such as Leader, Clunk Expert, (the one who reminds the group of the necessary steps and strategies), Gist Expert, Announcer (the one who asks group members to carry out different activities); and Encourager.

Strategic Instruction Model (SIM)

The focus of SIM therefore is to promote effective teaching and learning of critical content in schools. SIM strives to help teachers make decisions about what is of greatest importance, what strategies can be taught to students to help them to learn, and what classroom-based strategies are effective in helping them learn. It also introduces the types of skills and strategies that will help students to be successful in post-secondary settings including college and the workplace.

SIM consists of a menu of components for use by students with learning disabilities as well as instructional tools for use by teachers. Specific strategies used in this model related to reading are:

• paraphrasing (students express main idea and details in their own words)
• self questioning (students develop questions concerning reading passages and read to find answers)
• visual imagery (students visualize scenes in detail)
• word identification (students decode unfamiliar words by using context clues and word analysis).

The SIM model also offers a number of Content Enhancement Routines to help teachers manage and present the content of their classes in ways that help all students learn. Some of these routines focus on:

• organization (helps students understand how information is organized)
• understanding (helps students identify the main idea and concepts in reading)
• recall (which help students remember key information)
• application (which helps students apply what has been learned)

There is good evidence to suggest that when students are taught these strategies in a systematic, intentional, and intensive fashion, they demonstrate gains that enable them to perform at or near grade level.

Other Approaches to Help Struggling Readers

A number of research-based reading approaches have been identified as being helpful for working with secondary-level students who struggle with reading. There is no one best approach; very often a combination of different approaches is needed to help students acquire necessary skills.

• Fluency strategies (this involves fluent readers modeling oral reading for non-fluent readers, and non-fluent readers repeating readings of text aloud)
• Vocabulary strategies (students or teachers select vocabulary words and then students use the words in sentences or create visual images to help remember them)
• Study guide strategies (teachers develop study guides that students use to help them identify and understand key concepts in content area reading)
• Literature-based approaches (students read stories, poems, etc. and then talk and write about what they've read)
• Reciprocal reading strategies (students use specific strategies to help them increase their ability to monitor and improve their own comprehension)
• Text mapping strategies (students and teachers use four separate strategies to identify key concepts and understand relationships between key concepts in passages read)
• Vocabulary and concept mapping (students learn vocabulary words and concepts through creating a graphic representation of what is read)
• Word analysis strategies (Students learn and practice ways to decode unfamiliar multi-syllabic words)

Resources

Be sure to visit the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition and the OSEP Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students with Learning Disabilities Web site from which some of the above content was adapted.

Other helpful resources include:

• University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning provides information about SIM including a brochure, Spotlight newsletters, resources, and Web sites for related topics and organizations.
• Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, Reading Resources offers resources on reading research and assessment, and a link to the document, "Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources."
• Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, University of Texas at Austin provides information about Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) and resources on professional development for educators, and research and evaluation on reading and language arts.