How to Teach Reading Comprehension to Students With Learning Difficulties
Students with learning disabilities present a challenge to teachers in that the traditional methods of reading instruction may not be as effective as alternative ones. The key is finding what skills are lacking, which skills are due to the learning problem and developing techniques that best address them.
Instructions
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Identify the areas of weakness. Typically, learning disabled children have a much harder time reading for meaning. The teacher needs to observe and assess to find out if the learning disability causes deficits in decoding, phonological, vocabulary acquisition or a combination of these skills. Then the teacher will know how to drive instruction to meet these needs, using research-based comprehension strategies designed specifically for the individual student. This is not a one-size fits all procedure.
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Find the best approach for learning. Through the observations and assessments, the teacher will know what way a particular student learns best--in groups or alone, with manipulatives or graphic aides, or with peer tutors. The teacher can try all these methods then use the one that makes the student the most comfortable.
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Use short, but intensive interventions. Most learning disabled students will not have a long attention span, especially for a subject they are struggling with, like reading. The key to helping them learn how to comprehend is to keep it simple and short. Focus on short passages that lend themselves to simple comprehension at first; then move to more challenging ones as they improve. Use texts that are grade appropriate, but if the student is a really poor reader, do not choose a book that he will find too childish, even if it is on his reading level. Get a variety of books and allow the child to choose. This allows him to have an active part in the process.
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Help the students organize their thinking for clarity. Many learning disabled students have poor organizational skills. Therefore, when they read even short passages, they may have trouble remembering the main idea or other pertinent information. If decoding is a problem, then the students may have had such difficulty just sounding out words, that they gained no meaning whatsoever from the reading. Graphic organizers are a great aid for this situation. This gives the students a visual representation of what they have read, condensed into a readable form. Story webs, maps and idea trees are just a few other many graphic organizers that are useful. The teacher can work with the students several times on how to use these, but needs to encourage as much independence as possible. This develops metacognition, thinking about one's thinking. Processes like this are lost on learning disabled children when taught in whole group situations because they need more focused, one-on-one help.
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Apply what has been learned. For effective results, students need to apply what they have learned to real situations using real texts that they have read for personal enjoyment or for other academic subjects. The reading teacher can continue interventions, but move from conceptual practice to application of concepts. For example, if a student is struggling with science or history, the use of graphic organizers will still be a great aid to him as well as reinforce clarity and summarization which are both necessary for reading comprehension. This can be done with a variety of texts which helps the student to see that reading is not a subject contained within itself--the skills that make reading possible will enable comprehension in other academic areas as well as enrich personal reading.
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