The first site of special interest is Reading Rockets . The site is funded by WETA (Washington DC’s PBS TV) and the US Department of Education. The goal of the site is to help all children learn to read and support the caring adults who try to do just that.
The first article I came across was How to Adapt Your Teaching Strategies to Student Needs . The article tries to take the mystery out of adapting your instruction for different student needs. The suggestions are practical and doable. The article is broken down into different sections such as “If the child has difficulty learning by listening then try….”, “if the child has difficulty expressing themselves verbally then try….” and so on.
The next article worth delving into is one about the 4th grade slump.
The 4th grade slump is when a student must really start relying on what they’ve learned previously to succeed and to continue building on their learning. 4th grade is when reading goes from decoding and word recognition to fluency and comprehension. In Ohio, it also represents a new age level band in the curriculum meaning that there are lots of new skills for the students to master. The article discusses new research initiatives to better understand people learn to read and why some struggle and how to overcome those various struggles. We know students who start off behind often take years to “catch up” to their peers if at all. RTI (response to intervention) has shown promise to systematically identify learn who struggle and to help them get the proper support the need. A big part of RTI is ongoing data collection of a student’s progress. We have the QRA which are a good, but they only measure the progress towards the OAT goals and they only take place 3x per year. Progress monitoring needs to be more regular and ongoing so we know if our instruction is improving reading based on fluency and comprehension measures. I had a major lightbulb moment when Melissa Stewart stated that all our cramming of the indicators are wasted if the students lacking the most basic reading skills. These shorter term assessments aren’t indicator specific, rather they measure fluency and in some cases comprehension. Perhaps we should be gathering this data to help us identify where are learners are in terms of reading not just the indicators
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