Teaching Reading to Teens with Learning Disabilities - Page 3

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.

Sheldon H. Horowitz, Ed.D. is the Director of LD Resources & Essential Information at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.