I am not a reading specialist, but most of the discussion thus far has failed to address using the body itself as a vehicle for learning. Children, whether disabled or not, are far more in touch with movement and emotion that with their intellects. Any system that doesn't utilize the body to learn can only be helpful to children whose desire to read is so great that they do so with no instruction whatsoever. I was one of those children, but my siblings certainly weren't.

Additionally, I believe that any system that negates the gender differences both in the slower development in boys and their need for movement and physical play, is bound to serve little girls better than little boys. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that girls have an easier time paying attention and sitting still than little boys.

My brother and sister are normal learners, our youngest sister is autistic; all can read. My sisters both read for pleasure as well as instruction while my brother is far too impatient to read much beyond what he needs to know to negotiate the world.

I teach at the university level, and the young men are still far behind the women in the ability to obtain instruction and pleasure from reading. My belief, based in nothing but personal observation is that it takes much longer for young men to find a place of stillness that will allow them to settle and read.

I am a firm believer in starting them young - and the younger the better!

With the success of speech recognition software it is now possible to make the written word a part of the growing child's world in a way that has been impossible in the past.

I suggest that we could install large computer screens or tablets in every room where the growing child is likely to be - the parent could even hang a computer tablet around his/her neck such that the child could easily see it. The computers would be set to recognize speech in real time and to print the text upon the screen in large letters. The computers could even recognize individual voices and colour-code the text appropriately.

In this way the child would learn to read at his/her pace in a very natural way and with the least amount of effort.

This method would, I think, work very well if it was started immediately that the baby was born. It might also be effective with older students.

You might consider giving your older students such a computer tablet such that he/she can carry it about and 'play' with it. In this way the emphasis would shift from 'learning to read' to 'learning to use' language which, of course, is a lot more interesting. Additionally, it might take the stress out of the learning process.

Dear christopher. Thank you very much for your reply

Reading skills and the associated low comprehension ability is really becoming a huge problem due to the quality of teaching at school level. Due to the poor level of skill, moving learning from workshop-based learning to any other form of learning creates a challenge.

I am considering providing what I call A3L - animating audio action learning: images that animate as the concept that has to be learnt, is explained, supported with a voice over, text and doing activities. This stimulates emotion, reading, listening and internalisation through kinesthetic components.

Maybe I'll have some results withing the next few months...

Regards

Jacques

Try to, before reading, ask them what they believe the text is about, to have a hypothesis, no matter if it is right or wrong, it will keep the mind more open. Encourage your students to stop after a while, think and summarize in a sentence what they have read. Ask them what they can connect their reading to, what they already know. To be an active reader is to better understand a text, I believe.

Thanks dear Eva, I will try it.

My research concerns reading comprehension deficits in students with Autism. I have found through the literature that the strategies employed to improve comprehension in typically developing students can also assist those with Autism. These strategies include; questioning frameworks regarding literal and inferential meanings within texts, resolution of anaphors, prediction, visualisation, and sequencing activities. I have taken these strategies and embedded them into an app for iPad called 'Billy Possum's Interactive Comprehension'. This a 25 chapter children's story. My research has been submitted for publication.

Take a look at ZooPhonics. My sister, a reading specialist found that this was the best way for her to reach students who were supposedly unable to be taught to read. It is a multisensory approach. http://www.zoo-phonics.com/home.html

Thank you dear Jane. I will take a look at it.

I am not a reading specialist, but most of the discussion thus far has failed to address using the body itself as a vehicle for learning. Children, whether disabled or not, are far more in touch with movement and emotion that with their intellects. Any system that doesn't utilize the body to learn can only be helpful to children whose desire to read is so great that they do so with no instruction whatsoever. I was one of those children, but my siblings certainly weren't.

Additionally, I believe that any system that negates the gender differences both in the slower development in boys and their need for movement and physical play, is bound to serve little girls better than little boys. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that girls have an easier time paying attention and sitting still than little boys.

My brother and sister are normal learners, our youngest sister is autistic; all can read. My sisters both read for pleasure as well as instruction while my brother is far too impatient to read much beyond what he needs to know to negotiate the world.

I teach at the university level, and the young men are still far behind the women in the ability to obtain instruction and pleasure from reading. My belief, based in nothing but personal observation is that it takes much longer for young men to find a place of stillness that will allow them to settle and read.

To be successful readers, children have to be able to combine two broad skill sets of decoding and comprehension. These two main skill sets include sub skill sets such as; word recognition and phonics, and the integration of information with existing understandings. These skill sets generally develop in tandem with oral vocabulary matching comprehension see Gough and Tunmer (1986) for an explanation on the 'simple view of reading. There are still many children who have difficulties with either or both the two broad skill sets. When reading comprehension fails, it is about understanding where deficits may lie either broadly in word recognition or decoding, or from the finer sub skill sets that underpin comprehension for example visualisation, understanding inferences in text, resolution of anaphors to name a few. Then, appropriate strategies can be provided by the teacher to specially address the area of weakness.

Michelle, I would add anoter source of poor compehension, at least in teenage students. I am finding tat they have developed one skill in preferece to another because they misunderstand the purpose of reading. The ease of access to prewritten text (google) means that they have become highly adept at quick recognition of superficially meaningful text, already prepared by someone else, at the expense of deep reading of text to extract the complex web of meaning they may actually need in their specific context, to understand something fully. This shows up when I ask my students to explain a concept without recourse to the web. They have great difficulty constructing text that explains their thoughts. I am putting in place a strategy to chage the approach of students to reading as well as continuing with the more straightforward job of building skills.

Hi Mark, I would place understanding the purpose of text in the sub set skills of comprehension. This can be described as 'text user' or 'text analyst' under another framework for reading known as the Four Resources model.

"To become effective communicators, all learners need to be proficient in four interrelated and interdependent dimensions of language use. The Four Resources Model describes the resources students need in order to be literate.

Code breaker – a practice which has to do with breaking the code of the letters used in texts

Meaning maker – making literate and inferential meanings of texts

Text user – the focus of text-user practices is the use of texts in real-life reading situations

Text analyst – involves readers in the critical analysis of texts in order to understand how texts work."

(Luke & Freebody, 2002)

There is some interesting research investigating breadth and depth of vocabulary and how either of these components of oral language contribute to deficits in comprehension.

Also see:

Nation, K., & Snowling, M. J. (2004). Beyond phonological skills: Broader language skills contribute to the development of reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 342-356.

Cheers,

Michelle

Hi Michelle, I am aware of the 4 resorces model, however I really am talking about a mindset o belief about purpose in general which is sociological in cause, an consequntly sociological in remediation. Qualitatively different issue IMHO.

Hi Mark, are you referring to a concept akin to the text by Nicholas Carr called 'The Shallows' what the Internet is doing to our brains? I was having a discussion regarding this topic in Atlanta this evening with some colleagues from Montreal.

I'm not aware of the text, but it sounds on the surface like what I mean. I'm always uncomfortable with statements like 'the internet is doing to our brains' as if it is a physiological phenomenon. It seems to me to be a soiological phenomenon, where students choose a strategy based on what they believe is functional and it becomes a habit of mind, or maybe that they lose a particular skill because they never use it and to try to use it becomes more difficult and so less enjoyable and so less practiced. A kind of trajectory of behaviours that leads them to be unskilled in deep reading, but very skilled in skimming and recognising key points. I think it is possible to change the trajectory if structures are put in place in schools as early as possible to favour different habits and reinforce different behaviours.

I suggest that you take the students through the following steps.

1. In choosing the passage, the teacher should take into consideration age, ability and experience of the students.

2. Tell the student a short story which is similar to the one that they are going to read. (This story will prepare the students to ‘‘pounce’’ on their ‘‘prey’’).

2. Distribute or project the passage to the students and let them read silently. (The silent reading will enable them to digest the contents in the passage).

3. Explain the new vocabulary through the formation of sentences to bring out the meaning of the vocabulary.

4. Depending on the level of the students, a model reading could be given by the teacher or one of the students.

5. Ask them questions on the passage. The questions may follow this order depending on the age and or level of students: Some questions whose answers are found directly in the passage, those questions whose answers are not found directly in the passage and finally those which demand critical appreciation of the passage.

6. The comprehension passage must include expansion of vocabulary of students (synonyms and antonyms and also students should be asked to form sentences with the new words to bring out the meanings.

7. Let student state the main ideas in the passage in fewer words (i.e. summary).

8. Call upon the students to narrate the story of the passage in their own words (i.e. oral composition).

9. Thereafter, call on the students to write their own story for you to mark.

Dennis, these are the same type of strategies that are normally employed face to face in guided reading sessions in class with a teacher. The question frameworks that include literal and inferential meanings, anaphors, visualisation, and the priming or development of schema to allow a student access to the vocabulary used with a specific text.  As you mentioned it does depend on the age of the students and as Mark pointed out he is seeing many students now in adolescence with comprehension difficulties which could be attributed to the volume of information available and therefore creating a skimming effect whereby they are just surface reading for factual type information and not applying the strategies to work deeper within the text.

I've been working with children who have dyslexia or other reading difficulties for over 30 yrs. and use various strategies to try to boost reading comprehension, of course according to the children's age:

1) write the text without spacing and ask the children to "dissect" the text into words;

2) insert impertinent information, change subject mid sentence, skip words or phrases;

3) ask to eliminate all “useless” words , leaving just the “core/heart” of the message or text;

4) substitution games: example, change all the verbs in the text, but leave the same meaning;

5) ask the children to make up their own questions about the text (what question would you ask your classmate to obtain this information? or if you were a teacher, what question would you ask to trick your students on this topic?);

6) substitute adjectives and adverbs to make a nonsense text or a funny text;

7) turn the text into a power point presentation……

These ideas may seem banal, but they're fun and bring kids to pay close attention to the text.

A penny for your thoughts.

Laura

Developing mental imagery before they begin reading can be a very successful strategy.  This allows the students to mentally visualize as they read, making it more concrete.  

Attached is an article by Nanci Bell explaining the use of mental imagery in reading comprehension.

http://lindamood-bell.com/downloads/pdf/research/Gestalt.pdf

The natural way for improving reading comprehension, in PISA words, is to have reading habit.