Helping Struggling Secondary Readers

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Helping Struggling Secondary Readers

• Patricia Gildroy, Ph.D.
• Portland State University

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Helping Struggling Secondary Readers
Providing Needed Instruction
The Problems
Research based
The Research
Identifying students needs
Student
Intensive, explicit, systematic
Society
Schools
Comprehension strategies
Decoding skills
Decisions
Tools
Language comprehension
Reading fluency
Process
Vocabulary knowledge
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The Problems

• From 5th grade on, students are expected to read
  10,000 new words each year in their texts (Nagey
  Anderson, 1986).
• More than 8 million students in 4th -12th grades
  are struggling readers (USDoE 2003).
• 40 of high school students cannot read well
  enough to benefit from their textbooks (NAEP).
• Of the six million K-12 students receiving
  special education services, estimates say up to
  80 receive services in reading.

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The Problems

• Each year 383,000 students drop out of middle
  school and high school (NCES, 2000).
• Over 75 of surveyed students who dropped out
  indicated that difficulty with reading was a
  major contributing factor (Lyon, 2001).
• 26 of these students do not have minimal reading
  skills for daily life (Grigg, Daane, Jin,
  Campbell, 2003).

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Outcomes for Struggling Readers

• Struggling readers end up unprepared to
  participate fully in society, and face uncertain
  futures generally marked by poorer educational
  and employment opportunities (Hock Deshler,
  2003).
• From 1996 2006, the average literacy level
  required for American occupations is expected to
  rise by 14 (Barton, 2000).
• Between 1973 and 1998, the number of people who
  dropped out of school who are employed in
  blue-collar, clerical, and related areas declined
  by 2/3rds while the number of workers with some
  college employed in these fields doubled
  (Carnevale, 2001).

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Outcomes for Struggling Readers

• With fewer employment options for poor readers,
  70 of our prison population now includes
  individuals who read at the two lowest levels of
  proficiency (NIFL, 2000).
• The individual, familial, and societal impact of
  poor reading is extremely costly yet, with
  well-designed reading programs and highly trained
  teachers, 90-95 of poor readers can become
  average readers (Lyon, 1998).

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The Research on Adolescent Reading

• The majority of adolescents with poor reading
  skills need instruction in basic phonological
  awareness and decoding (Moats, 2001).
• Reading fluency is highly correlated with reading
  comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000).
• Poor readers often lack depth, breadth, or
  specificity in workd knowledge (Beck McKeown).

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The Research

• After the 4th grade, most vocabulary is learned
  through reading, with a gain of several thousand
  words per year (Moats 2001 Stanovich, 1986).
• Students with reading problems often lack
  effective and efficient comprehension strategies
  (Moats, 2001).
• Adolescent readers need to learn about different
  genre, text organizational patterns and
  structures, as well as literary devices (Moats,
  2001).

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Challenges in Providing Reading Instruction in
Secondary Schools

• General
• Content expansion
• Content vs. reading instruction
• Diversity of backgrounds of students
• Cultural Linguistic
• Disabilities
• Poverty
• Transiency rate
• Absenteeism

• Specific
• Identifying individual students reading needs
• Matching instructional focus with need
• Providing explicit, systematic, intensive,
  responsive instruction with sufficient duration
• Scheduling
• Evaluation

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Effective Instruction

• Effective reading instruction for struggling
  readers requires
• Clear consistent language
• Emphasis of important information
• Multiple concrete examples
• Enhanced modeling of each step
• Sufficient practice
• Teaching for generalization
• What to teach?

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A Work in Progress

• Goal To develop a cost-effective, easily
  administered assessment and decision making
  system that shows statistical and social
  significance in improving the reading skills of
  struggling secondary readers
• Identify students who need more systematic,
  explicit, and intensive instruction in reading
• Develop a decision making grid to identify the
  types of research-based interventions needed by
  individual students
• Validate a formative assessment system of student
  progress to inform instruction

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Types of Readers
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Comparison of Models Reading Problems
Using Challs stages of reading development
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Assessment Implementation Process

• Provide professional development for teachers
• Screen for students who did not pass the Oregon
  Reading Literacy test at their grade levels
• Conduct diagnostic assessment to determine
  student needs
• Schedule students into flexible homogeneous
  groupings for remediation (during school, before
  after school and ?)
• Conduct on-going formative assessments of
  individual student progress as well as the
  program as a whole
• Conduct statistical analysis on validity of the
  process

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Assessment Tools

• Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
  (DIBLES Good Kaminski, 2003)
• Individually administered 1 minute timed readings
  (3 at a time)
• Phonological awareness
• Word reading accuracy and fluency from Pre-K to
  6th grade levels
• San Diego Quick. (Ekwall Shanker, 1988 La Pray
  Ramon, 1969)
• Individually administered
• Graded word list to estimate students
  independent, instructional, and frustrational
  decoding levels pre-primer to 12th grade
• Secondary Reading Assessment Inventory (SRAI
  Cook Babigian, 2000)
• Group administration
• Students read and answer open ended questions
  about two expository reading passages

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Phases of HSSR Assessment and Intervention
Process
Phase 1 Identification
Phase 2 Diagnostic Screening
Phase 3 Interventions
Does the student have basic decoding skills?
Basic Decoding Comprehension Instruction
Accuracy fluency Assessment DIBLES ORF Level
6
Oregon Reading Literature Assessment
NO
YES
Fluency, Multisyllabic Word Basic Comprehension
Instruction
Does the student have good fluency, basic
comprehension skills?
NO
NO
YES
Comprehension Assessment
Comprehension Assessment San Diego Quick
SRAI
Does the student have a proficiency score of at
least ___?
Reading Comprehension Vocabulary Strategies
Instruction
Does the student have good comprehension?
NO
YES
Assessment of attendance motivation
YES
Phase 4 Weekly/bi-weekly monitoring
Intervention Successful?
Continue in Gen Ed.
YES
YES
Comprehensive language program. Phonology,
syntax, morphology, comprehension, vocabulary,
writing
Assess for Pervasive Language Disorder
NO
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Decision Rules for Diagnostic Screening
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Example Research-Based Interventions

• Basic Decoding Comprehension Instruction
• Corrective Reading
• Wilson Reading
• Language! (Also focuses on syntax morphology)
• Multisyllabic Word Reading
• REWARDS (Archer, Gleason, Vachon, 2000)(gr 3-4)
• Reading Fluency
• Great Leaps
• Read Naturally
• The Six Minute Solution
• Reading Fluency Comprehension
• REWARDS Plus (gr 5 Social Studies REWARDS Plus
  Plus (6th Science)
• Pervasive Language Disabilities
• Language!

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Collecting Fluency Data Goal At least 2 words
/week
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Secondary Struggling Readers
Providing Needed Instruction
The Problems
Research based
The Research
Identifying students needs?
Student
Intensive, explicit, systematic
Society
Schools
Decoding skills
Language comprehension
Decisions
Tools
Comprehension strategies
Reading fluency
Process
Vocabulary knowledge