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Helping Johnnie Read through
Jr / Sr High School
(Johnnie CAN Read)
by
Dr. Kathie F Nunley
A wealth of information on reading has been streaming our
way over the last 2 decades from both the neurology and education
research arenas. With all this research and money focused
on the brain and problems related to reading, it’s hard to
imagine how educators can still be asking the question, ‘Why
can’t Johnnie Read?” It is with a bit of tongue- in- cheek
that I report that the answer should be obvious.
After all, brain imaging studies have told us that some
children with dyslexia may have a very low capacity to their
short term memory from dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex.
But the research has also told us that children with dyslexia
may have small planum temporale area of the brain, or that
their right hemisphere is over involved in speech or over-involved
in reading. (Hugdahl, K. et al, 2003; Beeman, et.al, 2000)
We find research indicating that there are defects in
the brain’s minicolumns. (Casanova, M.. et al, 2004)
Imaging studies have also shown that children with dyslexia
have an inability to comprehend that words can be broken
down into smaller units or that ambiguous verbs may cause
them to lose the context of the material. (Shaywitz, S,
1999; Pickering, M. & Frisson, S., 2001)
The research has also suggested that they have a dysfunctional
angular gyrus in the left hemisphere or that there is a
left hemisphere processing limitation in the disembedding
mechanism. (Pugh, et. al, 2000; Rumsey, et.al., 1999)
Imaging studies have shown that children with dyslexia
have a significantly smaller cerebral volume and some cerebellum
dysfunction. (Ramus, F. et al, 2003)
Research has also indicated that these children have
lower blood flow in the temporal and inferior parietal regions
and even that an area of the perisylvian region known as
the caudal infrasylvian surface is significantly larger.
(Rumsey, et.al., 1999) And, the right hemisphere apparently
is over-involved in processing reading. (Breier et.al, 2003)
So, it’s all fairly clear then, isn’t it? (If this were an
email, I would insert the “smiley face” here)
Actually the correct answer to what causes dyslexia and other
reading problems may be along the lines of “all of the above,”
or one of those other familiar choices like “both a and c,”
or “a,b,d, but not c,” etc. Reading is an extremely complex
activity for the brain so it should come as little surprise
that reading problems are complex as well.
Because our society and educational system puts so much emphasis
on the written word as the avenue for information, those of
us in education feel tremendous pressure to ensure all of
our students eventually master reading before leaving our
system. In addition, we are frustrated and stifled when faced
with poor readers in various academic courses as our traditional
instructional methodology heavily relies on reading.
Much has been written on using other means of instruction
to teach students with poor reading skills. In fact, I have
authored many articles and books on this topic. Regardless
of how important it is for teachers to be competent in a variety
of reading strategies, the fact remains that reading is very
important. And any student who struggles with reading will
face many challenges and may have their options limited in
the adult world.
Traditionally much pressure has been put on teachers in the
primary grades to turn all students into competent readers
before 3rd grade. In fact, in many districts it is even the
kindergarten teacher who carries the great bulk of this responsibility.
There is a belief that all school success pivots on reading
successfully at an early age.
Many people believe that children who can be taught reading
at an early age will remain “gifted” throughout school and
that those who don’t master reading until late in the normal
range, will remain a member of the group of underperformers
in school.
While there is some research that shows that children’s 1st
grade performance differences only get greater in the next
2 or 3 years (an achievement gap that widens - strugglers
struggle more, accelerated learners move ahead further), there
is a larger body of evidence that shows that “slow-readers”
eventually tend to catch up with the “fast learners” and that
the “fast learners” slow down a bit, so that the two groups
do not show so much variation from each other by 4th and 5th
grade. (Parrila, et al, 2005; Schatschneider, et al, 2004;
Guthrie, J, 2004)
This leads us to what is known as the ceiling effect- the
idea that two children may have similar learning potentials,
but their rates of learning vary. To use a simple example
of ceiling effect, one child may start to walk at 8 months
of age and seemingly has mastered walking by his first birthday.
Another child may not start to walk until 16 months of age.
But by the age of 3, both children are fairly competent walkers.
In other words, there’s a ceiling to the mastery.
We do see that some students perform well in reading early
and continue to do so through most of their school years.
We also see that some students perform poorly and continue
to do so through most of their school years. But a sizeable
number of poor performing students improve to become above
average or good performers later in school. What you rarely
find is a child who is a good performer in 1st grade but becomes
a poor performer by 4th grade. (Guthrie, J. 2004)
In fact, there is significant research which indicates that
first graders who perform in the “above average” group ( defined
as more than one standard deviation above the mean) have only
about a 50/50 chance of being in that same “above average”
group in 4th grade. And those first graders in the “below
average”group (greater than one standard deviation below the
mean) have only about a 50/50 chance of being in that same
“below average” group in the 4th grade.
So the research seems to indicate several factors at play
here in reading skill variability in the elementary grades.
First, our schools seem to be doing a pretty good job in helping
children learn to read within the first few years of school.
The extra effort and focus on those children seen as “at risk”
or “below average” is probably well founded and worth continuing
as that extra focus seems to help reduce the gap by 4th and
5th grade.
Secondly, there probably is a bit of a ceiling effect at
work here in that children may begin at age 5 with very similar
learning potentials, but their rate of learning may vary widely.
In other words, children reach the “ceiling” of competent
reading at different times.
So while much research shows that reading delays between
the age of 5 and 8 may very well simply be developmental differences,
there’s certainly no reason to be lax in our work with children
who seem to struggle to be proficient readers. This brings
us to the second focus of this article and that is, what does
the research tell us about what works and what doesn’t work
with struggling readers?
A perusal of the educational psychology research seems to
indicate that the practical matter of struggling readers really
needs to be divided into two groups - those under the age
of 12 and those over the age of about 9. (The 9 -12 year olds
overlap into both groups) The reason for that is that struggling
readers tend to be “struggling” with different issues in those
two age groups. Most early struggling readers are working
with phonological processing and phonemic issues. Most reading
problems in the middle and upper grades are associated with
fluency issues - the student cannot read with enough fluency
to allow for comprehension of the material. To put it simply,
elementary aged children are generally learning to read and
secondary grade children are generally reading to learn, so
the educational problems are different.
Working with struggling readers at the Elementary Level
Children in the younger group are learning to read. A young
struggling reader may have problems with phonemes, short term
memory, sight word recall, fluency or even a combination of
these factors. Various banks of research tell us that problems
in “learning to read” must be addressed systematically with
specific, direct instruction in all of the following:
• phoneme analysis
• fluency building
• oral reading practice
• spelling
While not popular with school budgets, to be effective, this
systematic instruction really needs to be one-on-one as opposed
to small group, pull-out programs. (Blachman, et al 2004).
You can also increase elementary students’ feelings of self-efficacy
by helping them learn specific reading strategies for reading
improvement and mastery. (Schunk & Pajares, 2002). These specific
reading strategies may include:
• activating background knowledge prior to reading
• offer questions that are generated from the reading
• offer the use of graphic organizers to help students comprehend
key ideas
• provide students a way to monitor their comprehension during
reading (Baker & Zimlin, 1989)
Working with struggling readers at the secondary level
We can find excellent research as well on secondary reading
issues. Students at this level need to not only be fluent
readers, they need to be engaged, motivated readers, if they
are to glean information from their reading.
Don’t assume that because students are good readers, they
can effectively learn from a textbook. The key to effective
reading at the secondary level is having students that WANT
to understand the material. Motivation and engagement are
required if they are to process the reading at a deeper level
for better reading comprehension.
Instruction that merges motivation and cognitive strategies
will increase comprehension. Again, we find that the research
suggest we use multiple strategies to improve reading and
learning with secondary students.
Our goals should be to have “engaged readers” as opposed
to “disaffected readers”.
Engaged Readers:
• are active and involved
• interact socially to learn from the text
• are persistent
• are goal directed
• think during learning
Disaffected Readers:
• are alienated from the learning process
• may be apathetic or rebellious
So, how does a teacher create or encourage reading engagement?
Regardless of what age you are teaching, you can help students
become engaged in their reading by first giving students "content
learning goals." Help them see or set goals for what
they should learn through the text. Students gain more knowledge
from reading with content goals than simply suggesting or
hoping they will score better on a test. (Grolnick & Ryan,
1987).
Another way to make engaged learners is to provide students
with a choice of texts. If you are unable to offer text choice,
at least offer them a choice in their discussion group partners
or the way in which they will present the information they
glean from their reading. Try also, to find texts that the
students themselves find interesting.
Finally, one of the keys to engaged readers is allowing social
collaboration during the reading process. In other words,
allow a sort of “book club” event by designing discussion
activities for the students throughout the reading process.
You may also want to include hands-on activities that can
be done in groups to help students process the information.
(Guthrie, et al 2004).
References
Blachman, B.et al. (2004). Journal of Educational Psychology,
Vol 96(3), 444-461.
Breier et.al (2003). Neuropsychology, Vol17 (4), 610-621.
Casanova, M. et al. (2004). Journal of Child Neurology,
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Deci, E. & Ryan, R. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self
determination in human behavior, New York: Plenum Press.
Dolezal, S. et al. (2003). Elementary School Journal. 103:
239-267.
Elbro, C. & Petersen, D. (2004). Journal of Educational
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Furrer, C. & Skinner, E. (2003). Journal of Educational
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Grolnick, W. & Ryan, R. (1987). Journal of Personality and
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Hugdahl, K. et al. (2003). Neuropsychologia, Vol 41(6), 666-675.
Mather, D. (2003). Journal of Learning Disabilities. Vol
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Reynolds, P. & Symons, S. (2001). Journal of Educational
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Schneider, Roth, Ennemaser. J. of Ed Psych 2000 vol 92,(2)
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Schunk, D. & Pajares, F. (2002). The development of academic
self-efficacy. In A. Wigfield & J Eccles (Eds), Development
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Shaywitz, S. (2003). Biological Psychiatry. Vol 54(1), 25-33.
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Copyright 2005, Kathie F Nunley, Brains.org.
All rights reserved
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