Reading Comprehension Difficulties

Recognizing the characteristics of children with learning disabilities and deciding how to help them is a problem faced by schools all over the world. Although some disorders are fairly easily recognizable (e.g., mental retardation) or very specific to single components of performance and quite rare (e.g., developmental dyscalculia), schools must consider much larger populations of children with learning difficulties who cannot always be readily classified. These children present high-level learning difficulties that affect their performance on a variety of school tasks, but the underlying problem is often their difficulty in understanding written text. In many instances, despite good intellectual abilities and a superficial ability to cope with written texts and to use language appropriately, some children do not seem to grasp the most important elements, or cannot find the pieces of information they are looking for. Sometimes these difficulties are not immediately detected by the teacher in the early school years. They may be hidden because the most obvious early indicators of reading progress in the teacher's eyes do not involve comprehension of written texts or because the first texts a child encounters are quite simple and reflect only the difficulty level of the oral messages (sentences, short stories, etc.) with which the child is already familiar. However, as years go by and texts get more complex, comprehension difficulties will become increasingly apparent and increasingly detrimental to effective school learning. In turn, studying, assimilating new information, and many other situations requiring text comprehension -- from problem solving to reasoning with linguistic contents -- could be affected. Problems with decoding, dyslexia, and language disorders have attracted more interest from researchers than have specific comprehension problems and have occupied more room in specialized journals. Normal reading comprehension has also been a favorite with researchers. However, scarce interest has been paid to subjects who have comprehension difficulties. This book is an attempt to remedy this situation. In so doing, this volume answers the following questions: * Does a reading comprehension problem exist in schools? * How important and widespread is the problem? * Is the problem specific? * How can a reading comprehension difficulty be defined and identified? * Does the "syndrome" have a single pattern or can different subtypes be identified? * What are the main characteristics associated with a reading comprehension difficulty? * When can other well-identified problems add to our understanding of reading comprehension difficulties? * Which educational strategies are effective in preventing and treating reading comprehension difficulties? * What supplementary information can we get from an international perspective?

Reading Comprehension: Assisting Children with Learning Difficulties examines the complex nature of reading comprehension. It introduces a model for classifying reading comprehension based on an expanded Simple View of Reading. Issues related to assessment, diagnosis, and remediation of reading comprehension difficulties are discussed and translated into clear recommendations to inform reading intervention design and practice. It gives an informed understanding as to why reading comprehension is difficult for some children with learning disabilities such as ADHD, autism, language difficulties and dyslexia. From leading literacy research, the book develops a deeper understanding of thinking processes that facilitate comprehension at the word, discourse, and metacognitive levels. Children will benefit from the introduction of evidence-based methods for teaching reading comprehension using structured multiple-strategy frameworks.

This practitioner resource and course text has given thousands of K-12 teachers evidence-based tools for helping students--particularly those at risk for reading difficulties--understand and acquire new knowledge from text. The authors present a range of scientifically validated instructional techniques and activities, complete with helpful classroom examples and sample lessons. The book describes ways to assess comprehension, build the skills that good readers rely on, and teach students to use multiple comprehension strategies flexibly and effectively. Each chapter features thought-provoking discussion questions. Reproducible lesson plans and graphic organizers can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. New to This Edition *Chapters on content-area literacy, English language learners, and intensive interventions. *Incorporates current research on each component of reading comprehension. *Discusses ways to align instruction with the Common Core State Standards. *Additional instructional activities throughout.

While most children learn to read fairly well, there remain many young Americans whose futures are imperiled because they do not read well enough to meet the demands of our competitive, technology-driven society. This book explores the problem within the context of social, historical, cultural, and biological factors. Recommendations address the identification of groups of children at risk, effective instruction for the preschool and early grades, effective approaches to dialects and bilingualism, the importance of these findings for the professional development of teachers, and gaps that remain in our understanding of how children learn to read. Implications for parents, teachers, schools, communities, the media, and government at all levels are discussed. The book examines the epidemiology of reading problems and introduces the concepts used by experts in the field. In a clear and readable narrative, word identification, comprehension, and other processes in normal reading development are discussed. Against the background of normal progress, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children examines factors that put children at risk of poor reading. It explores in detail how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and materials commonly used to teach reading.

Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions thatchange students' lives Essentials of Understanding and Assessing ReadingDifficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide toreading assessment and intervention. It provides a detaileddiscussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, whichwill help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accuratelyassess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn aframework for organizing testing results from current assessmentbatteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studiesillustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion isprovided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonologicalawareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and readingcomprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quickreference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes,and other design elements to call attention to importantinformation. Although a substantial amount of research has shown that mostreading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standardreading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. Schoolpsychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students withreading difficulties and to make recommendations to address suchdifficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessmentand intervention techniques, backed by the most current researchfindings. Bridge the gap between research and practice Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student strugglesin reading Improve reading skills using the most highly effectiveevidence-based techniques Reading may well be the most important thing students are taughtduring their school careers. It is a skill they will use every dayof their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success.Struggling students need help now, and Essentials ofUnderstanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how toget these students on track.

Comprehension is the ultimate aim of reading and listening. How do children develop the ability to comprehend written and spoken language, and what can be done to help those who are having difficulties? This book presents cutting-edge research on comprehension problems experienced by children without any formal diagnosis as well as those with specific language impairment, autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, hearing impairment, head injuries, and spina bifida. Providing in-depth information to guide research and practice, chapters describe innovative assessment strategies and identify important implications for intervention and classroom instruction. The book also sheds light on typical development and the key cognitive skills and processes that underlie successful comprehension.

The ultimate aim of reading is not the process but to understand what we read and comprehension can take place at many different levels. There has been an increasing emphasis on the importance of reading comprehension in recent years but despite this there is very little written on this vital topic accessible to trainee and practicing teachers. The Handbook of Reading Comprehension presents an overview of recent findings on reading comprehension and comprehension problems in children. It provides a detailed examination of the characteristics of children who have reading comprehension difficulties, and examines ways in which comprehension can be supported and improved. It is accessibly written for students and professionals with no previous background in the psychology of reading or reading problems. This indispensable handbook asks the question ‘what is comprehension?’ The authors consider comprehension of different units of language: understanding single words, sentences, and connected prose and outline what readers (and listeners) have to do to successfully understand an extended text. This book also considers comprehension for different purposes, in particular reading for pleasure and reading to learn and explores how reader characteristics such as interest and motivation can influence the comprehension process. Different skills contribute to successful reading comprehension. These include word reading ability, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic skills, memory, and discourse level skills such as the ability to make inferences, knowledge about text structure, and metacognitive skills. The authors discuss how each one contributes to the development of reading comprehension skill and how the development of these skills (or their precursors) in pre-readers, provides the foundation for reading comprehension development. Areas covered include:- Word reading and comprehension Development of comprehension skills Comprehension difficulties Assessment Teaching for improvement Throughout the text successful experimental and classroom based interventions will be highlighted, practical tips for teachers and summary boxes detailing key points and explaining technical terms will be included in each chapter

PETER BRYANT & TEREZINHA NUNES The time that it takes children to learn to read varies greatly between different orthographies, as the chapter by Sprenger-Charolles clearly shows, and so do the difficulties that they encounter in learning about their own orthography. Nevertheless most people, who have the chance to learn to read, do in the end read well enough, even though a large number experience some significant difficulties on the way. Most of them eventually become reasonably efficient spellers too, even though they go on make spelling mistakes (at any rate if they are English speakers) for the rest of their lives. So, the majority of humans plainly does have intellectual resources that are needed for reading and writing, but it does not always find these resources easy to marshal. What are these resources? Do any of them have to be acquired? Do different orthographies make quite different demands on the intellect? Do people differ significantly from each other in the strength and accessibility of these resources? If they do, are these differences an important factor in determining children's success in learning to read and write? These are the main questions that the different chapters in this section on Basic Processes set out to answer.