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Content is... "what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information" (Tomlinson, 2023).
Content is... "what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information" (Tomlinson, 2023).
Importantly, content, or what students need to learn by this definition can be applied to SLDs.
LET'S BREAK THIS DEFINITION DOWN.
From extensive research, we know that in general, students with a SLD in beginning reading struggle with specific aspects of reading. Thus a teacher must focus instructional time on fostering development in the following areas: phonological awareness, phoneme awareness, accuracy, and automaticy.
Content covers phonological/ phoneme awareness.
Content covers phonological/ phoneme awareness.
Berninger & Wolf highlight that "more impressive gains in reading achievement occur when children receive phoneme awareness training along with instruction in relationships between sounds and letters” (2009, p. 53).
For students to decode, specifically those with a SLD in beginning reading, "students need to recognize syllable patterns, spelling patterns larger than letters of letter groups corresponding to phonemes on alphabetic principles, affixes, morphology of language" (Berninger & Wolf, 2009, p.53).
Examples of tasks that increase phonological awareness: finding patterns of rhyme, naming initial/final sounds, segmenting words into sounds and blending sounds into words, emphasizing alliteration, pointing out consonants and vowels, and noticing onset/rime (State Government of Victoria, 2019).
Examples of tasks that increase phoneme awareness: blend individual sounds to make a word, stretch out a word into its sounds, swap in a different sound to the beginning, middle, or end of a word to make a new word (ex-Cat --> Sat) (Reading Rockets, 2023).
Content focuses on both accuracy and automaticity
Content focuses on both accuracy and automaticity
In a study by Hudson et al., (2011), researchers found that when students with a SLD in beginning reading received content that aimed to strengthen both their accuracy and automaticity, their decoding automaticity improved more drastically than students who received content targeted at strengthening JUST accuracy or JUST automaticity.
One way that teachers can foster both accuracy and automaticity is through “repeated readings,” a term coined by Samuels (1979) (Dowhower, 1987).
This means having students read a text multiple times. It is known to result in "a virtually automatic decoding of a passage, and the improved accuracy and fluency lead to improved comprehension" (Gersten, 2001, p.279).
LET'S BREAK THIS DEFINITION DOWN.
To strengthen skills in the above reading areas, content should also aim at strengthening motivation, metacognition, generalization, working memory, recall, and executive functioning; all of these are necessary for students to make sense of the content at hand during reading time.
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MOTIVATION
MOTIVATION
What is motivation? A person's drive to do something. The reason a person has for acting in a certain way.
Motivation can be extrinsic, meaning a person is driven by external rewards (for example, money), or intrinsic, which means that a person is driven to complete a task because it is interesting/ enjoyable (Tovli, 2014).
As for how interventions can target it...
The Joy of Reading: The Joy of Reading Program (Tovli, 2014) details the importance of choosing content, specifically books, that align with students' interests. This study found that when students choose their own books for independent reading, they experienced an increase in reading quality and quantity, and "preferred reading books over other leisure activities" (p.74).
Integration of technology: When "serious games" are utilized in lessons, research finds that students with SLDs motivation to learn increases. Garcia (2019) describes serious games as video games that serve as a pedagogical tool and aim to strengthen problem-solving abilities. Each "serious game" tackles a specific topic, some of these are linguistic awareness and letter recognition.
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METACOGNITION
MOTIVATION.
The key aspects of teaching and planning according to the SRSD (Rogers et al., 2020).
What is metacognition? A person's ability to evaluate whether they are performing successfully (Gersten et al., 2001).
As for how content can target it...
To help students build metacognitive strategies, Gersten (2001) emphasizes the need for educators to teach students how to monitor their comprehension. Though some may consider comprehension to be an aspect of reading only relevant to older readers, research finds it crucial for readers of all ages (Bratsch-Hines, 2020).
Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD): This is an evidence-based metacognitive strategy instructional approach that incorporates goal setting, self-instruction, (talking oneself through steps), self-reinforcement, and self-monitoring (Rogers et al., 2020).
This model is based on the Strategies Intervention Model (SIM). The SIM is more explicit and rigid.
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GENERALIZATION & WORKING MEMORY
MOTIVATION.
What is generalization? A person's ability to apply the same skill or behavior in more than one context, or more specifically, academic domains. Generalization can be broken down into near and far transfers, both of which students with a SLD may have challenges with. While near transfer involves a transfer of knowledge between similar contexts (one reading skill to another) far transfer involves the transfer of knowledge between dissimilar contexts (reading and math) (Peng, 2023).
What is working memory (WM)? The part of our short-term memory that is responsible for immediate processing, is the small amount of information that can be held in our mind at one time (Cowan, 2014). WM is essential to generalize (Gersten et al., 2001). Research finds that individuals with a SLD in reading "suffer WM deficits related to the phonological loop, a component of WM that specializes in the retention of speech-based information, and this system is of service in complex cognition, such as reading comprehension, problem-solving, and writing" (Swanson & Siegel, 2011, p.1). Regarding beginning reading, WM "stores and processes information and supports early word reading through decoding by processing and storing speech sounds to enable blending" (Peng, 2023, p.1).
What is working memory (WM)? The part of our short-term memory that is responsible for immediate processing, is the small amount of information that can be held in our mind at one time (Cowan, 2014). WM is essential to generalize (Gersten et al., 2001). Research finds that individuals with a SLD in reading "suffer WM deficits related to the phonological loop, a component of WM that specializes in the retention of speech-based information, and this system is of service in complex cognition, such as reading comprehension, problem-solving, and writing" (Swanson & Siegel, 2011, p.1). Regarding beginning reading, WM "stores and processes information and supports early word reading through decoding by processing and storing speech sounds to enable blending" (Peng, 2023, p.1).
Integration in content: Students should perform tasks where they combine working memory tasks and task-linking or generalization strategies (Peng, 2023). When reading tasks require students to retrieve information from their long-term memory and then apply this knowledge to other areas of reading or different subjects, students' academic performance is positively affected (Peng, 2023).
Working memory training must occur simultaneously with academic instruction (Peng, 2023). An example of strengthening working memory during academic instruction is a student determining the meaning of a new word as they read it in a book.
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RECALL
MOTIVATION.
What is recall? The ability to pull information out of memory and apply this information to a task. Children with SLDs recall less important information and more incidental information than children without a SLD. For young children difficulties recalling information could apply to recalling letter names or a visual representation of a letter, blends, digraphs, etc.
Because of difficulties regarding recall, this group of students in particular benefit from cues to help them retrieve previously forgotten information. Cues are prompts that help students reinstate memory traces (Swanson & Siegel, 2011).
Practicing Recall- Dialogic Reading Practices:
Al Otaiba et al., (2018) discuss how dialogic reading practices, or speaking with students about the text they are reading, is an ideal opportunity to practice and therefore strengthen students' recall. One way to do this is during shared book reading, during which the adult reader asks questions to engage children. These reading practices "encourage their use of vocabulary, and help them to recall information" (Al Otaiba et al., 2018, p. 832).
The best interventions "retrieve and utilize relevant information from long-term memory during the working memory-academic tasks under a working memory-demanding situation" (Peng, 2023, p.8).
Easing the Retrieval Process:
Peng (2023) states that teaching students "rehearsal and meta-cognitive strategies" can aid in retrieval by "reducing working memory load, combining the retrieved information with information extracted from working memory-academic tasks, and integrating new information with information retrieved from long-term memory" (p. 8).
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EXECUTIVE
FUNCTIONING
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What is executive functioning (EF): EF is a set of cognitive processes "involved in general-purpose mechanisms including (but not limited to) working memory and switching/ flexibility" (Peng, 2023, p.1). Switching means effectively shifting between different mental tasks. EF is the coordinator of memory, recall, generalization, and metacognition.
EF is considered the fundamental construct in reading development (Peng, 2023).
Reading Practice:
The practice of academic tasks, specifically reading tasks serves as a “long-term intervention” for cognitive skills, with long-term effects" on EF (Peng, 2023, p. 2). Read! Read! Read!
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SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL (SE) KNOWLEDGE
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What is social emotional knowledge (SE): SE is having knowledge of self-control (cognitive regulation and emotional processes) and social and interpersonal awareness.
When students have lower SE knowledge, they tend to evoke lower teacher expectations in regard to lower reading attitudes/efficacy/ motivation (Peng, 2023).
How to develop SE:
"Students develop SE knowledge through dialogic reading, e.g., by experiencing how to listen to others, take turns, and respond to different opinions. In dialogic reading of books on SE content, SE knowledge is cued, modeled, and coached with instruction" (Peng, 2023, p. 2).
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