ELEMENTARY READING INTERVENTION STRATEGIES Presenter: Cathy Moncada Vorbeck, M.Ed

1. ELEMENTARY READING INTERVENTION STRATEGIES Presenter: Cathy Moncada Vorbeck, M.Ed Teacher of Students with Learning Disabilities

2. “At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book --- that string of confused, alien ciphers --- shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.” (A Curriculum Guide for Reading Mentors)

4. Statistics from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development • About 20% of elementary students nationwide have significant problems learning to read. • At least 20% of elementary students do not read fluently enough to enjoy or engage in independent reading. • Forty-four percent of fourth graders in America cannot read fluently. (Osborn, Lehr, & Hiebert, 2003)

5. What research shows… • The choice of reading intervention should be based on a student’s needs rather than on their chronological age or grade level (Louisa Moats, 2001). • Students with poor phonemic awareness skills in first grade are more likely to have reading difficulties in fourth grade. (Pressley, 2006) • Phonics instruction can help all children to read.

6. Direct approaches to teaching are successful methods. • Establishing a positive relationship with students is crucial to help them succeed. • Students' reading comprehension and overall success relates strongly to the extent of their vocabulary knowledge (Lehr et al., 2006)

7. EFFECTIVE READING INSTRUCTION SHOULD INCLUDE: • Instruction on decoding, comprehension, • phonemic awareness, and vocabulary. • Literature appreciation • Systematic and explicit instruction • Daily exposure to a variety of texts • Comprehension strategies • Complement with frequent writing • Quality and consistency over time!

8. DIRECT INSTRUCTION Direct Instruction is a teacher-directed instructional method of carefully organized lessons. Everything is taught through demonstration and action and practiced until it is fully understood and each child can internalize it. Every concept is reviewed thoroughly to ensure mastery.

9. Essential areas of early reading: • Phonemic Awareness: auditory process that involves hearing sounds that make up words. • Phonics: recognizing that sounds are linked to letters, and that those letters combined make up words. • Fluency: reading automatically, with little or no effort, almost as when speaking casually. • Vocabulary: understanding and using words when speaking, listening, reading, and writing. • Comprehension: understanding meaning from text.

10. Kindergarten • Concepts of print • Alphabet recognition • Phonemic awareness • Blending • Sense of story • Begin sequencing • Vocabulary development

11. First Grade • Phonemic awareness & Phonics • Blending and word building • Short vowels and consonants • Final e (CVCe pattern) • Long vowel digraphs (ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, etc.) or consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh, etc.) • Consonant clusters (br, cl, st, ng, etc.) • Verb ending • Vocabulary development

12. Second grade • Previous skills practice • More complex vowel spellings • Compound words, suffixes, prefixes • Multisyllabic words • Vocabulary development • Fluency

13. 1.PHONEMIC AWARENESS

14. PHONEMIC AWARENESS Modest amounts of time result in increase in phonemic awareness (10-30 min per session 2 or 3 times a week). Consider its dimensions: • Units of sounds: rhyming, syllable segmentation, recognition of sounds • Tasks of operations: manipulating sounds, isolating sounds, blending • Use of cues: games, activities, poetry, songs

15. Tips for Teaching Phonemic Awareness • Start with easy blends: m, s, f, and go onto sounds that stop: d, t, b. • Have students watch your lips and use a mirror for them to see themselves. • Use games, pictures, stuffed animals, or things that make learning engaging. • Avoid difficult sounds at the beginning.

16. Teaching Phonemic Awareness • Ask children to make new words by manipulating the first letter of the word: Use magnetic letters or letter cards • Building words: what rhymes with dig and starts with p? Rhymes with dog and starts with fr (use consonant blends once mastered). • Move: clap or tap for syllables and/sounds • Sing songs with rhyming words, let students predict and come up with new words. • Use books that present a creative use of rhymes, like THE HUNGRY THING by Slepian & Seidler.

17. Identifying beginning, middle and ending sounds: • What’s the beginning sound in these words? Turtle, time, teeth? • What is the middle sound in beet, meat, seem? • What is the end sound is bed, said, mad? • Using picture flashcards that are familiar to students, ask them the name of the picture and then to identify the first and/or second sounds in the word.

18. More phonemic awareness… Rhyming activities: • Children walk around in big circle listening to words the teacher is saying. When she says a word that does not rhyme, children sit down. • I say, you say game: I say red, you say ____. I say make, you say ____. • Thumbs up: put 2 thumbs up if these words rhyme: tail-mail, pig-cow?

19. 2. PHONICS

20. PHONICS “Systematic phonics instruction results in better growth in children’s ability to comprehend what they read than non-systematic or no phonics instruction” (2) It is particularly beneficial for children at risk for learning difficulties. Once they have the basics of phonics, they make faster progress in acquiring reading and writing skills, and show greater growth in word study skills.

21. PHONICS Teachers should begin teaching phonics by showing letter-sound correspondences in a specific sequence. Teach letter-sound combinations: for instance, t and h together correspond to /th/ sound and word. Teach word patterns

22. More Phonics • Teach ABC song • Word families (eg. back, lack, sack, black) • Compound Word Games (memory, matching) • Short Vowel identification (using letter cards) • Using paper bags in alphabetical order, students take word cards one at a time, name the picture, say its initial sound, and place the card in the corresponding bag.

23. This activity can be done by the whole group, incorporating kinesthetic learning by sorting the cards into paper bags arranged around the room.

24. Scoop and Spell (making words!) • Using the ice cream scoop, scoop out a spoonful of letter tiles onto the sorting mat • Observe all of the letters you scooped out • Make as many words as you can using ONLY the letters you scooped out.

25. Teach these: • Consonant letter sounds • Blend sounds: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, wr, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl, scr, str, sm, sn, sp, sc, sk • Diagraphs: sh, ch, th, wh • Double vowel sounds, which say the name of the 1st vowel: ai, ea, ee, oa • Silent e and its role

26. 3. FLUENCY

27. FLUENCY Fluency is important for accurate word reading, speed, and intonation. It requires well-developed word recognition skills, reading that sounds effortless, natural expression, rhythmic flow. Teaching fluency will help improve reading comprehension.

28. Determine appropriate reading level to provide the right practice for students. • Use texts, word lists, or sounds appropriate for each student. • Use rhymes, poems, and songs to encourage frequent repetition. Fluency develops when students practice reading and rereading words, passages, or other texts with a high degree of success.

29. Tips to teach Fluency: • Rubber band stretch for sounds. Now… say it fast! Student blends the sounds slowly and then says the word fast. • Allow many opportunities to practice: rereading material, pre-reading words or phrases they will share later in the class. sight word practice (Dolch list, Fry list). • Provide lots of corrective feedback, encouragement, and praise.

30. Track students’ gain in fluency:

31. Use a tape recorder for self assessments and monitoring. • Some activities are: playing “Around the World” using sight words, letter recognition using an alphabet arc and timer, and/ or using an alphabet strip. • Allow the struggling reader opportunities to shine! Students need plenty of practice to develop that self-confidence necessary to succeed.

32. 4. VOCABULARY

33. VOCABULARY • Vocabulary items that are needed should be taught explicitly: provide examples and non-examples, explain the meaning, pronounce words correctly. • Pre-teach new words to be used. • Provide or encourage students to make connections to specific words. • Provide repeated exposure to words and opportunities to use them. • Plan activities to match words to meanings.

34. Give students sentences with blanks to complete using the new words. • Use a combination of activities for different learning styles: word searches, pictures, lists, crossword puzzles, etc. • Use games to teach and practice new words. Example: wink, pink, think • Practice using synonyms and antonyms, as well as use of prefixes and suffixes to create more words. • Use model and pictures for learning more words. • Engage students in discussions to practice new vocab.

35. For students with special needs: Focus on relevant words. Analyze and select the most important words to be used. Struggling readers will not be able to remember all of them.

36. Research has demonstrated… • Students learn new vocabulary through indirect and direct instruction. • Most students are able to learn only 8–10 new words per week through direct instruction. • Elementary students should learn approximately 3,000 new words each year. • This means that if students are learning approximately 400 words per year using direct instruction, they must learn the remaining 2,600 words through indirect instruction. What should teachers do???

37. Reading Alouds • Children indirectly learn many new words from teacher read-alouds! • Thinking out loud when reading provides useful examples and good modeling techniques.

38. 5. READING COMPREHENSION

39. READING COMPREHENSION Comprehension is a process of creating meaning. It is making sense out of text. It is an interactive (thinking) process.

40. To improve reading comprehension: • Connect to prior knowledge • Help students remember basic new vocabulary • Teach questioning techniques: have students ask questions before, during, & after reading, and make predictions. • Give them opportunities to practice with peers and independently!!!

41. What are they talking about? The procedure is quite simple. First, you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient, depending upon how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more, and the whole cycle will have to be repeated.

42. More Activities to Develop Comprehension • Ask “wh” questions (start simple) • Encourage students to describe characters: name, appearance and actions • Students should retell events (what happened first, next, last) and reorder • Connect the text being read to other passages or situations. • Model making judgments regarding the written text (agree, disagree, why?)

43. Use Graphic Organizers Events: What happened first… What happened next… What happened at the end…

44. Sort statements into FACT and OPINION (eg, Chocolate is yummy, Chocolate is made from cocoa beans.) • Use KWL charts and discuss. • Teach them how to infer word meaning. • Ask them to compare and contrast characters, events, stories. • Encourage them to make predictions, record their predictions and go back to them at the end of a story to discuss what happened.

45. Final recommendations… • Begin instruction at the level students need it most. Remember to treat the cause, not the symptoms of reading difficulties. • Select appropriate literature for instructional and independent reading. • Assess: diagnosis and continuous assessments are crucial. • Be consistent with the program you select.

46. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES • http://www.fcrr.org: Florida Center for Reading Research • http://www.starfall.com/: fun way for kids to use phonics & phonemic awareness • http://www.ldonline.org/: great tools and info! • http://www.teachervision.fen.com/: lesson plans & lots of reading activities • http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/: latest news on reading research, assessment & instruction • http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/resources.html: info on special education, research, instructional strategies, & more! • http://www.succeedtoread.com/phonics: reading skills • http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/read-and-write • http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/

47. Happy reading to all! Thank you

48. References • Eric (Educational Resources Information Center), Carnine, Douglas W and others, Des Moines, IO: Prentice-Hall, Order Processing, P.O. Box 11071 • Stockard, Jean, Ph.D. & Engelmann, Court, Ph.D. The Development of Early Academic Success: The Impact of Direct Instruction’s Reading Mastery ARTICLE in The Journal of Behavior Assessment and Intervention in Children. • Moats, Louisa, Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science, Houston, TX: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), University of Texas. • The Source: A Curriculum Guide for Reading Mentors, Just Read, Florida!, Booklet. • Yopp, Hallie Kay & Ruth Helen, Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom, The Reading Teacher, International Reading Association, Oct 2000 • Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its implications for Instruction, NIH Publication US Government Printing Office 2000. (2) • Novelli, Joan, Phonics, NY: Scholastic,º 2006 • The IRIS Center for Training Enhancements. (2008). CSR: A reading comprehension strategy. Retrieved on [month day, year,] from http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/csr/chalcycle.htm • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. • Mastroprieri & Scruggs, The Inclusive Classroom: Strategies for Effective Differentiated Instruction, 4th Edition, Pearson Education Inc., Boston, 2010 • Education, Introduction to Exceptional Students, Pearson Learning Solutions, Boston, 2011 • http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/resources.html: offers free on line interactive resources based on research about education of students with disabilities • http://www.succeedtoread.com/phonics.html: guide to teach phonics • http://www.starfall.com/: free public service to teach children to read using phonics. Kids love the interactive activities.