Intervention Notes: Reading, Writing, Math & Study Skills

Reading:

Important general principles that effect reading writing and math

  • Memory processes are critical for encoding incoming information and for storing long term information.
  • The executive function (what an individual uses to manage his own attention and to self regulate goal directed behaviour)
  • Automaticity: assessment and intervention should address automaticity of low level skills and strategies for higher order thinking and problem solving.
  • To teach low level and high level skills close in time within the same lesson so that low level skills transfer to high level skills.

Meta-analysis by Swanson and Lee, 1999.

Found that there were seven themes

·         Pecking order of bang for the intervention buck.

1.      reading comprehension has the highest effect size for change

2.      vocabulary is second

3.      word recognition is third

4.      phonics

5.      spelling

6.      handwriting

·         The most effective intervention combined both direct instruction and strategy instruction and group instruction and one-on-one instruction.

·         Combined direct strategy instruction was more effective for reading comprehension while direct instruction alone was more effective for word recognition.

·         Effect sizes for word recognition were higher with instructional components that involve segmentation of words. Effect sizes for reading comprehension were higher when teachers explicitly modeled comprehension strategies.

·         Differences between students with and without learning disabilities were smaller when treatments included strategy instruction.

·         Intelligence scores predicted effect sizes when reading was severely disabled or when reading was in the average range (on the extremes), but they were less predictive when reading was mildly deficient (in the middle).

·         Effect sizes for direct instruction and strategy instruction were comparable.

The essential components of reading instruction are phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, fluency, and comprehension.

Four linked processes in reading: Phonological processing (say it to themselves visually in the mind), orthographic processing (the perception of visual info from the page), contextual processing, and meaning processing. 

  • First level of phonological awareness is word level, where children recognize the entire word
  • Second is syllable level, where children can recognize the beat of the spoken language
  • Third is onset-rime, where children can identify matching or rhyming words and can recognize the onset of the syllable which proceeds the rhyme.
  • Fourth is phoneme level (by kindergarten): the ability to detect, match, and blend phonemes. This later leads to success in phonics instruction.

Alphabetic principle: related to the understanding of print concepts which are necessary in skilled decoding. Recognition that words can be spoken or written. Recognition that print corresponds to speech, that words are composed of individual sounds, and that words are composed of letters that map to the sounds (graphemes map to phonemes).

The four phases from immature reading to reading words by site (Ehri).

  1. Logographic phase: Phase in which young children read words using non alphabetic qeus, (bed looks like bed)
  2. visual que or pre-alphabetic phase: reader begins to recognize partial letter-sound relationships.
  3. Full alphabetic phase: includes the use of phonemic segmentation and phonological recoding. (converting print into speech)
  4. Consolidated alphabetic phase: the reader accesses the complete spellings of words from memory from the stored sequences of phonemes that occur frequently in words and gradually less attention is paid to deciphering each word and more attention is focused on interpretation of text.

Reading Comprehension (sources of difficulty):

  • Lack of vocabulary development and background knowledge.
  • Vocabulary and reading comprehension are believed to be reciprocal.
  • Strategic processing of text. (students who monitor their own reading read better. Students who have trouble have trouble identifying important information when they summarize, have trouble discussing content, have trouble making predictions.). Underlining has been proven to be effective.
  • Text structure: For some students, it is hard to understand how text is organized in structure. For example: fictional stories typically contain specific elements (plot, characters, etc.) whereas expository texts are more complex and are used to explain some idea. We need to know what to expect, based on what we are reading. Prompts for different types of texts can be a useful intervention
  • Reading fluency: practice is the answer here.
  • Task persistence: the more complex the reading becomes, the more energy it takes to read it.

Some interventions which are useful for reading comprehension

  • Use facilitators, prompts, outlines, graphic organizers, story mapping, etc.
  • Rely on explicit teaching, teaching explicit comprehension strategies.
  • Use guided practice

Strategies for helping in expository texts

  • Organizational training.
  • Mapping organizers
  • Summary skills training (have them summarize and self-monitor how they do this)

Writing:

Written expression in early grades is a good predictor of overall school success.

Students with writing problems often pay little attention to the needs of the audience. They have a lack of text organization. There is little development of rhetorical goals. (They start writing, then just wander all over the place). They fail to stick to the topic.

When doing a writing assessment, look at

  • Writing fluency (LD students contain fewer words and shorter sentences than students in the normal population).
  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary (students with high incidence disabilities tend to use less rich vocabulary – have a constricted list of words they use)
  • Use of mature words (words containing seven or more letters)
  • Sentence structure: summarize the types of sentences the students produce. Notice simple, incomplete, compound, complex, run-on, and fragmented sentences.
  • Conventions (spelling, capitalization, and punctuation).
  • Content (use a rubric or rating scale)
  • Traditional CBM data.

Writing instruction has recently moved away from the mechanics to instruction which focuses on the range of tasks.

It is critical to teach the explicit steps in the writing process. It has been shown to be helpful to provide a think sheet or prompt sheet for the steps. Those steps are:

  1. generate ideas
  2. develop and organize on paper.
  3. use a common language about writing between the student and teacher so they can communicate about their work.
  4. refine and edit
  5. transcribe words into final product.

POWER (Plan Organize Write Edit Revise)

Explicit teaching about text structures has proven to be effective. Explicit instruction should use models. Concrete maps or organizers should go with those models. Ongoing feedback is necessary between the instructor and student in order to improve performance.

Math:

There is often poor overlap between the curriculum and the standardized assessments. Because of this, the CBM technique is important, as it can be specific to the area of concern at the time.

There are some empirically proven math interventions:

Missouri Mathematics Effectiveness Project (effective in increasing math achievement: Uses daily review, development of new skills, seatwork, homework, other assignments, and special reviews)

Team Assisted Instruction (Reliant on the interdependence of group goals and individual accountability. This is a cooperative learning program.).

Class wide Peer Tutoring (Pals)

Direct Instruction Model (included small group instruction, systematic teacher prep, guided and frequent practice with feedback, and a system for monitoring student progress.)

The key features in successful programs are teacher led instruction, high levels of academic engagement, continuous progress monitoring, and frequent feedback.

Study Skills:

  • Rewards Program Teach to decode and understand longer words.
  • Teach students to survey the chapter and form a general impression of the text. (They need to learn as much as they can in a brief amount of time. This also activates their background knowledge. This helps them make predictions about the content).
  • Teach students to read the text and attend to main ideas and details. (Engages students more actively in the reading process. Directs attention to the most important information. Engages them in rehearsal.)
  • Teach them to attend to the content of maps and graphics and tables.
  • Teach them to verbally rehearse and take written notes on the main ideas and details.
  • Write summaries of materials read.
  • Teach how to take a test. Memorization skills.

Organizing Information:

Organization skills which must be taught directly to get good results:

  1. Modeling
  2. guided practice
  3. feedback
Filed under: EDC 514-515 Academic Assessment for Intervention
Copyright: April, 2004 - David Profitt