Examples of Reading Difficulties

• Difficulty differentiating phonemes

• Difficulty recognizing individual sounds in a word

• Difficulty isolating individual sounds in a word

• Difficulty identifying the number of sounds in a word

• Difficulty recognizing similarities between words (rhyming)

• Difficulty blending sounds to form words

• Omits syllables or vowels at the beginning or end of a word

• Difficulty recalling phonemes (sounds)/grapheme (letters) relationships (decoding/encoding)

• Difficulty sounding out words

• Fails to hear vowel or soft consonant sounds in spoken words (bet-bit)

• Switches sequence of sounds in words

• Appear to hear but not listen (Tell me how a couch and a chair are alike sounds like tell me how a cow and a hair are alike)

• Difficulty comprehending complex sentence structure

• Difficulty retaining new information and synthesizing discussion (in group work, from lecture)

• Difficulty remembering and summarizing what is read

• Difficulty connecting what they read to background knowledge while reading

• Difficulty with dictated assignments and assessments

• Difficulty learning words through recitation

Reading Strategies

• Expose children to sounds, music, rhythms, and language

• Teach with books that use a lot of rhyming words

• Provide opportunities to explore and manipulate sounds, words, and language (phonemic awareness)

• Use explicit, systematic, synthetic phonemic awareness and phonics instruction

• Use decodable texts for daily practice

• Teach letter/sound relationships using Elkonin boxes

• Teach reading sounds (phonemes) using a multisensory approach

  • 1. Say and push: The teacher dictates a word such as bat. The student uses manipulatives (buttons, cubes, counters, etc.) to push for each sound in the word. The teacher should stretch the word out when dictating (baaaaaaaaat). The student should push a manipulative (counter) up for each sound they hear.

    2. Say and tap: the teacher dictates a word. The student taps, claps, hops, etc. for each sound they hear in the word. The teacher may need to demonstrate until the student has an understanding.

    3. Have students clap the syllables in a word.

• Teach and use rehearsal strategies (e.g., rhymes, acronyms, anagrams, associations, mnemonics)

• Pre-teach new vocabulary/concepts and check for understanding by asking the student to use his/her own words to explain the term

• Teach using semantic story organizers and story maps

• Teach students to rehearse and over-learn new information

  • 1. Verbal rehearsal-voiced or using their inner voice

    2. Elaborative rehearsal-associate information with prior knowledge-paraphrase, create a story

• Teach guided questioning: Take turns asking and answering each others’ questions

• Model and teach checks for understanding: brain-breaks, two-minute pauses, think-pair-share, instant quizzes (white boards, true-false, yes-no, thumbs up-thumbs down)-teach the student to do their own

• Teach cognitive/visual mapping and non-linguistic representations (ex. tree diagrams, time-sequence, problem-solution, flow charts, concept webs, compare and contrast charts, etc.)

• Teach self-monitoring skills while reading, demonstrating how to stop and ask oneself if materials/words have been understood

• Teach comprehension strategies such as guided note-taking and webbing

Accommodations

• Allow the student to use books on tape/assistive technology/electronic reader, start to finish, book share

• Use flashcards for vocabulary and pair with illustrations

• Present information with a retrieval cue, such as category labels

• Provide retrieval practice

• Prepare the student for the answers to listen for by using advance organizers

• Provide scaffolded hints through cognitive coaching