TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR STUDENTS WITH READING COMPREHENSION DISABILITY

RECIPROCAL TEACHING

There are four main components to Reciprocal Teaching: Predicting-students use context clues or

background knowledge to predict what will happen in the text

Question Generating-the teacher models how to generate and answer main idea questions while reading

Summarizing-the students are taught to highlight key points in the text; this allows the students to monitor their understanding

Clarifying-students reread if they misunderstand a part of the text or find unknown vocabulary

STORY MAPPING A schema building technique to help

students improve reading comprehension.

Students are given graphic organizers to identify the key parts of a story (characters, setting, conflict)

First a teacher models how to complete a story map; then students complete story maps independently.

DISSECT-UNKNOWN VOCABULARY

Discover the content-skip the unknown word and continue reading the passage to predict what the word may mean

Isolate the prefix-are the first few letters a prefix?

Separate the suffix-check to see if the last few letters are a suffix and can be isolated

Say the stem-check to see if the stem is recognized without the prefix and/or suffix

DISSECT (CONTINUED)

Examine the stem-If the stem is unknown complete the following 2 steps: If the word begins with a vowel, separate the first two

letters and pronounce; if the word begins with a consonant, separate the first three letters and pronounce.

If the first rule does not apply, isolate the first letter and try to pronounce again. If there is more than one vowel next to each other, practice each vowel sound and then blend together until it’s pronounced correctly.

Check with someone-students should check with a teacher, parent or peer.

Try the dictionary-if a student cannot ask for help, they should try to find the word in the dictionary and use the pronunciation key in the dictionary.

SCROL-HELP IMPROVE CONTENT AREA READING

Survey the headings and subheadings to see what information you will learn

Connect the segments-write key words from headings and find a relationship between them

Read the heading segment and pay attention to words that will explain what those words mean

Outline main ideas and details Look at the heading segment to check the

outline for accuracy

OTHER STRATEGIES

Visual Imagery-students can be taught to create visual images while reading

Self-Questioning-students create questions while reading to improve recall and keep interest

Multisensory teaching-use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic approaches to the story.

WHY USE THESE STRATEGIES?

When students with a reading learning disability use these learning strategies, they become more engaged in the reading. They use the strategies and become more actively involved in the reading. (Mercer and Pullen, 2009, p. 276) This is helpful for students with ADHD because they will remain interested in what they’re reading for a longer period of time and won’t get bored.

RESOURCES

Mercer, C.D., & Pullen, P.C. (2009). Students with Learning Disabilities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

NCLD Editorial Team. (2014). Working with Dyslexia. http://www.ncld.org/students-disabilities/ld-education-teachers/working-dyslexia