Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) / Chapter Skim
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10. Recommendations for Practice and Research
10. Recommendations for Practice and Research
Pages 313-344
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From page 313... ...
We have conceptualized our task as cutting through the detail of mostly convergent, sometimes discrepant research findings to provide an integrated picture of how reading develops and thus how its development should be promoted. CONCEPTUALIZING READING AND READING INSTRUCTION Effective reading instruction is built on a foundation that recognizes that reading outcomes are determined by complex and multi 313
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From page 314... ...
Adequate progress in learning to read English beyond the initial level depends on: · having established a working understanding of how sounds are represented alphabetically; · sufficient practice in reading to achieve fluency with different kinds of texts written for different purposes; and · control over procedures for monitoring comprehension and repairing misunderstandings. Effective instruction includes artful teaching that transcends-and often makes up for -- the constraints and limitations of specific instructional programs.
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From page 315... ...
Disruption of any of these factors increases the risk that reading will be delayed or impeded, a phenomenon particularly prevalent in impoverished urban and rural neighborhoods and among disadvantaged minority populations. Within all demographic groups, children with speech or language impairments, cognitive deficits, hearing impairments or who have a biological parent with a reading disability are at risk for reading difficulties.
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From page 316... ...
Next we address teacher preparation and professional support. The final section provides a research agenda that includes attention to assessment and its role in identifying effective prevention strategies.
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From page 317... ...
Primary prevention steps designed to reduce the number of children with inadequate literacy-related knowledge (e.g., concepts of print,4 phonemic awareness, receptive vocabulary) at the onset of formal schooling would considerably reduce the number of children with reading difficulties and, thereby, the magnitude of the problem currently facing schools.
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From page 318... ...
Parents and other caregivers, as well as the public, should be the targets of such efforts, which should address ways of using books and opportunities for building language and literacy growth through everyday activities both at home and in group care settings. Identification of Preschool Children with Special Language and Literacy Needs Findings: Cognitive and educational research demonstrates the negative effects of deferring identification of, and intervention for, children who need additional support for early language and literacy development.
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From page 319... ...
Recommendation: Public authorities and education professionals should provide research-derived guidelines for parents, pediatricians, and preschool professionals so that children who have a hearing or language impairment or who lack age-appropriate skills in literacy-related cognitive-linguistic processing are identified as early as possible and given intervention to support language and literacy development. Promoting Language and Literacy Growth Findings: Research with preschoolers has demonstrated that (a)
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From page 320... ...
At the same time, however, we caution that the focus of intervention should not be limited to overcoming these risk factors in isolation but should be more broadly designed to provide a rich language and literacy environment that methodically includes the promotion of vocabulary, the understanding of print concepts, and phonological awareness. Preschools and other group care settings for young children, including those at risk for reading difficulties, too often constitute poor language and literacy environments.
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From page 321... ...
There is evidence that explicit instruction that directs children's attention to the phonological structure of oral language and to the connections between phonemes and spellings helps children who have not grasped the alphabetic principle or who do not apply it productively when they encounter unfamiliar printed words. Of course, intensity of instruction should be matched to children's needs.
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From page 322... ...
. Conclusions: Our analysis of the research literature in reading acquisition leads us to conclude that, in order to prevent reading difficulties, formal instruction in reading needs to focus on the development of two sorts of mastery: word recognition skills and comprehension skills.
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From page 323... ...
· Because the ability to obtain meaning from print depends so strongly on the development of word recognition accuracy and reading fluency, both of the latter should be regularly assessed in the classroom, permitting timely and effective instructional response where difficulty or delay is apparent. Recommendations on comprehension: · Kindergarten instruction should be designed to stimulate verbal interaction to instruct vocabulary and encourage talk about books.
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From page 324... ...
Students with Limited Proficiency in English Findings: Hurrying young non-English-speaking children into reading in English without ensuring adequate preparation is counterproductive. Learning to speak English first contributes to children's eventual fluency in English reading, because it provides a foundation to support subsequent learning about the alphabetic principle through an understanding of the sublexical structure of spoken English words and of the language and content of the material they are reading.
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From page 325... ...
Although print materials may be used to support the development of English phonology, vocabulary, and syntax, the postponement of formal reading instruction is appropriate until an adequate level of oral proficiency in English has been achieved. School-wide Restructuring Findings: When a large percentage of a school's students are from disadvantaged homes, it is often the case that median student reading achievements in that school will be low.
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From page 326... ...
However, additional efforts will still be necessary for some children, including supplementary tutoring provided by professionals with specialities in reading and special education support and services. Findings: At present, many interventions for children in the primary grades are aimed at helping those most at risk of failure, but they are too often implemented as late as third grade, after a child is well behind his or her classmates.
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From page 327... ...
Nationally, there are steady reductions in the average size of elementary classrooms; however, schools in poor urban areas continue to show higher class sizes than schools in all other areas. Conclusions: To meet the goal of preventing reading difficulties, a greater burden will fall on schools whose entering students are least prepared in the requisite skills (e.g., schools in poor urban
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From page 328... ...
This type of resource planning contrasts with the practice of giving schools bonuses for high test scores as well as practices directed toward equating per-pupil resources across schools. Recommendations: To be effective, schools with greater numbers of children at risk for reading difficulties must have extra resources.
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From page 329... ...
Central to achieving the goal of primary prevention of reading difficulties is the teacher's knowledge base and experience, as well as the support provided to the teacher; each of these may vary according to where the teacher is in his or her professional development and his or her role in the school. Teachers need to be knowledgeable about the research foundations of reading.
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From page 330... ...
330 PREVENTING READING DIFFICULTIES IN YOUNG CHILDREN changed to incorporate this knowledge base, including at a minimum: · information about language development as it relates to literacy; · information about the relationship between early literacy behavior and conventional reading; · information about the features of an alphabetic writing system and other writing systems; · information about both phonology and morphology in relation to spelling; · information about comprehension and its dependence on other aspects of reading and on language skills; · information about phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and writing development; · procedures for ongoing, in-class assessment of children's reading abilities; · information on how to interpret and modify instruction according to norm-referenced and individually referenced assessment outcomes, including in-class assessments and progress monitoring measures used by specialists; · information about the learning and curricular needs of diverse learners (students with disabilities, with limited English proficiency, with English-language dialect differences) ; · in settings in which children are learning to read in a language other than English, an understanding of -- as well as strategies and techniques for -- teaching children to read in that language and information about bilingual language and literacy development; · in settings in which non-English-speaking or limited-Englishspeaking students are in an English as a second language program and learn to read in English, information and skill to help these students confront a double challenge: learning to read and learning a new language; · information on the design features and requirements of a reading curriculum; · information about how teachers apply research judiciously to their practice, how to update their research knowledge, and how to
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From page 331... ...
Rather, ongoing support from colleagues and specialists as well as regular opportunities for self-examination and reflection are critical components of the career-long development of excellent teachers. Recommendation: Local education authorities and teacher education programs should give teachers support and skills throughout their careers, especially during their early entry into the profession, to ensure that they are well prepared to carry out their mission in preventing reading difficulties in young children.
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From page 332... ...
A principal goal of this experience is the ability to integrate and apply the knowledge base in practice. Collaborative support by the teacher preparation institution and the field placement is essential.
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From page 333... ...
Recommendations: Every school should have access to specialists, including speech and language clinicians, English as a second language teachers, resource room teachers, and reading specialists who have specialized training related to addressing reading difficulties and who can give guidance to classroom teachers. Educational Products and In-Service Development Findings: There is currently no requirement and little incentive for publishers or adopting schools to evaluate reading-related materials and in-service programs in terms of their efficacy.
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From page 334... ...
RESEARCH AGENDA The process of study and discussion on what is known about the effective prevention of reading difficulties in young children has led us to recognize a number of issues that are in special need of attention from researchers. In particular, we have identified two newly emerging areas for research, several related to assessment, and several related to research on interventions.
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From page 335... ...
Recommendation: Toward promoting high standards of achievement for all students in all schools, state and local education departments should sponsor research to evaluate and improve the utility and uses of their benchmarks or standards of reading achievement for purposes of informing instruction, evaluation, and allocation of resources and effort, including staffing and staff development as well as student service options. Basic Research Findings: As documented in this report, recent progress in understanding reading and its difficulties is largely the product, direct and indirect, of findings from basic research.
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From page 336... ...
Such efforts should address factors that influence the development of the knowledge and capabilities that constrain literacy growth in the middle and later grades, as well as those related to initial reading acquisition. Informal and Curriculum-Based Assessment Findings: Given that effective instruction consists of responding to children's needs while building on their strengths, it necessarily depends on a sensitive and continual capacity for monitoring student progress.
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From page 337... ...
Concern extends to the range of systemic changes, including, for example, implementation of new student services, such as tutoring programs or after-school instruction, new professional development initiatives, and even new evaluation strategies. Recommendation: The appropriate government agencies and private foundations should sponsor research to help school systems develop and use data-based decision making.
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From page 338... ...
The more and less effective attributes of such programs cannot be adequately identified on the basis of existing data. Recommendations: Toward developing more efficient and effective programs of early intervention, appropriate government agencies and private foundations are urged to: · coordinate early screening and intervention research so as to identify causal difficulties and their most effective redress; · recognize and study the systemic nature of organizational structures in order to offer useful interventions at the preschool level with ties to family, communities, cultural groups, etc.; · evaluate how promising interventions can be delivered and sustained with greatest efficacy through Head Start programs, homebased programs, day care centers, software, television, and other media and social institutions; · sponsor long-term prospective studies of early intervention strategies to assess the impact and longevity of different intervention strategies and their components and to determine how those factors interact with later instruction and experience, in school and out.
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From page 339... ...
Researchers and educators possess scant empirical guidance on how best to design literacy instruction for such children in either their primary language or English, much less in both. Recommendations: Appropriate government agencies and private foundations are urged to sponsor research on the factors that influence the literacy acquisition of children for whom English is not the primary language.
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From page 340... ...
Once a child makes a transition to English literacy, what are the advantages and disadvantages of continuing primary language academic instruction? · Are there threshold levels of oral English proficiency and primary language literacy that are required for successful transition to, and satisfactory achievement in, English literacy?
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From page 341... ...
Demonstration studies of linguistically informed instructional programs for African American youth have yielded promising results, but more analytic and longer-term research is required to gauge these benefits and to understand the factors on which they depend. Recommendations: Studies of the long-term effects of linguistically informed instructional programs on literacy outcomes for speakers of AAVE could include: · modifications of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction that are sensitive to differences in the phonological characteristics of AAVE and those presumed by English orthography; · exploration of morphemic and word analysis strategies for reinforcing the structure and significance of English orthography; and · research on the role of other linguistic factors, such as syntax, in the reading acquisition of AAVE speakers.
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From page 342... ...
More sophisticated research is needed to specify common factors, if any, that are found for children who are successful following retention or an extra-year program. Recommendations: Appropriate government agencies and private foundations should increase research efforts on the role of retention and extra-year programs in the prevention of reading difficulties.
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From page 343... ...
Although research has made great strides in identifying the attributes of effective classroom instruction, many questions have been inadequately addressed. Recommendations: Toward improving reading outcomes for all children, research toward increasing the efficacy of classroom reading instruction in kindergarten and the primary grades should be the number one funding priority.
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From page 344... ...
· What are the best strategies for monitoring and managing the range of student progress and difficulties in any given classroom or building? · What kinds of classroom, grouping, and staffing options would significantly improve instructional delivery in the primary grades?
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