Week+7


 * WEEK 7 (july 23-27)**
 * Meet to discuss research findings and Angela presents information about specific strategies for students with special needs.
 * Create a lesson plan using specific interventions discovered in our readings and research. How would one hour look? Angela: create a lesson plan for one-on-one, small group and large group interventions.
 * Share these lessons with each other.

(Angela)

[[file:796.LessonPlan.docx|Lesson Plans-Lisa]] (link)
I chose to approach each lesson around the same topic - teaching cause / effect organization. Adaptations are made within and at the end of the lesson.


 * RESEARCH ON READING SUPPORT FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS - (ALL ARTICLE CONTRIBUTIONS BY ANGELA)**


 * IMPORTANT COMMENT: each article dealing with secondary reading support for students with reading disabilities said the same thing: not enough research or current programs are being done about this topic. Because of this, every research article comes with a caveat that one should take this into consideration when reading the authors' conclusions.**

Figure I in article summarizes the findings:
 * [[file:interventions with secondary reading difficulties.pdf|ARTICLE I]]**
 * Vaughn, Sharon and Jack M. Fletcher (2012). Response to Intervetnion with Secondary School Students with Reading Disabilities. J Learn Disabil May 1, 2012 45 : 195 - 203. **
 * 1) Adolescence is not too late to intervene. Interventions do benefit older students. However, complex reading-related problems such as vocabulary development and background knowledge that are associated with comprehension are unlikely to be readily and quickly remediated.
 * 2) Consider the type of reading problem (e.g., word level, text/background knowledge level, or combined) and focus the treatment to meet students’ needs. Older students with reading difficulties benefit from interventions focused at both the word and the text level.
 * 3) Most older students with reading difficulties benefit from improved knowledge about concepts and vocabulary related to their content learning.
 * 4) Since background knowledge and vocabulary are considerably underdeveloped in the vast majority of older students with reading difficulties, school-wide approaches to enhancing knowledge and vocabulary across Tier 1 content areas (e.g., social studies, science, math, and reading/language arts) are needed.
 * 5) Teaching comprehension strategies to older students with reading difficulties is beneficial but is likely insufficient for students who also have significant difficulties with vocabulary, background knowledge, and/or decoding.
 * 6) The reading comprehension gains of students in Grades 6 and older are likely to be significantly smaller than those in other reading and reading-related areas studies of foundation skills such as phonemic awareness and phonics.
 * 7) We can expect that remediation of students with significant reading problems who are in Grades 6 and older is likely to take several years.
 * 8) To better understand instructional conditions that could close the reading gap for struggling readers, we need studies that provide instruction for significant periods of time and assess outcomes across reading areas including vocabulary, comprehension, and knowledge acquisition.
 * 9) We currently have little evidence that more clinically responsive approaches to teaching students with reading disabilities will be associated with improved outcomes since currently there is not adequate evidence to support this claim. However, the development and testing of clinical instructional approaches for students with reading disabilities is needed.

While this study discusses the reading interventions for tier 1, 2, and 3 of RTI, it included only students from grades 6-8, referencing them as “secondary students”. The researchers looked first at adequate screeners to identify students in need of Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, using the Texas state test as well as a developed fluency test. The fluency test included narrative and informational passages with lexile bands within 110 between passages (p. 5). The fluency tests showed less growth between regular testing, so progress monitoring at less frequent intervals should be considered. Even so, the authors stated that a fluency test in addition to the state reading test should be consider valid measures for the screening process. The authors also suggest that the maze assessments are reliable and valid (p. 10). The authors still raise the same questions about reading interventions at the secondary level. Their study showed little gains for students when providing 50 minute reading interventions for two years and then provided a customized small group intervention for third year and gains were still minimal. The authors also suggested that schools continue using texts that build background knowledge and understanding of content and use research - based interventions in content areas. However, the authors never state what these interventions are (p. 11). Final conclusion is to continue tier I support in the content areas; provide classes to improve comprehension and vocab development for tier 2 students; and have very small group (2-4) interventions 50 min / day for tier 3 students with ongoing interventions in the summer(p. 11). Ultimately, this is what many schools are currently doing.



Abstract: “This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the reading of middle and high school students: (1) reading curricula, (2) mixed-method models (methods that combine large and small-group instruction with computer activities), (3) computer-assisted instruction, and (4) instructional-process programs (methods that focus on providing teachers with extensive professional development to implement specific instructional methods. “The review concludes that programs designed to change daily teaching practices have substantially greater research support than those focused on curriculum or technology alone. Positive achievement effects were found for instructional-process programs, especially for those involving cooperative learning, and for mixed-method programs. The effective approaches provided extensive professional development and significantly affected teaching practices. In contrast, no studies of reading curricula met the inclusion criteria, and the effects of supplementary computer-assisted instruction were small.”
 * Slavin, R. E., Cheung, A., Groff, C. and Lake, C. (2008), Effective Reading Programs for Middle and High Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis. Reading Research Quarterly, 43: 290–322. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.43.3.4**


 * Table 4. page 21 (310)** lists the “strength of evidence” for the effectiveness of various programs. No program was considered strong. Moderate evidence was found with Jostens, Read 180, Student Team Reading, and The Reading Edge; limited evidence for Accelerated Reader, Voager Passport, Benchmark Detectives, Strategy Intervention Model and others. Other programs were listed as insufficient or not qualifying for the study.
 * Some found with Moderate Evidence for effectiveness:**
 * Jostens –****“** provides an extensive set of assessments, which place students in an individualized instructional sequence, and students work individually on exercises designed to fill in gaps in their skills. Jostens is typically used for 15–30 minutes, two to five days per weeks” (p. 9).

focuses on explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies.
 * Read 180** – various studies, including independent studies, all found that students who followed Read 180 did have greater gains than the control groups (pp. 7-8).
 * Student Team Reading** – a cooperative learning program for middle schools in which students work in four- or five-member teams to help one another build reading skills. Student Team Reading has students engage in partner reading, story retelling, story-related writing, word mastery, and story-structure activities to prepare them and their teammates for individual assessments that form the basis for team scores. Instruction
 * The Reading Edge** - The Reading Edge uses the same cooperative learning structures and basic lesson design as Student Team Reading but regroups students for reading instruction according to their reading levels across grades and classes.


 * OVERALL CONCLUSIONS – common elements of each program that provided some evidence of effectiveness. In the end, my conclusion is that a great teacher with a strong teaching of reading background and the appropriate resources trumphs any "program" toted as a fix-all for struggling readers.**
 * Cooperative learning - students work in small groups to help one another master reading skills and in which the success of the team depends on the individual learning of each team member
 * Positive effects were also seen for other programs designed to improve the core of classroom practice.
 * Programs that provided extensive professional development and focused on improving classroom teaching have good evidence of effectiveness. (Mixed-method models, which combine large-group, small-group, and, provide extensive professional development to teachers, as do strategy instruction programs such as SIMS and the Benchmark Detectives Reading Program. Like cooperative learning programs, these approaches focus on improving classroom teaching, and have good evidence of effectiveness.
 * Consistent with previous research - forms of CAI (“programs that use technology to enhance achievement . . . and are usually supplemental) generally produced small effects.
 * The findings of this review add to a growing body of evidence to the effect that what matters for student achievement are approaches that fundamentally change what teachers and students do every day (such as cooperative learning and mixed-method models).
 * . More research and development of reading programs for secondary students is clearly needed, but we already know enough to take action, to use what we know now to improve reading outcomes for students with reading difficulties in their critical secondary years.

This brief article by E. Sutton Flynt and William Brozo, a current researcher in the implementation of RTI at the secondary level, emphasizes the need for content area teachers to be teaching reading, writing, speaking, and listening within the content using research-based strategies that are used to "integrate their topics and concepts across content areas" (p. 1).

Every piece of research about secondary reading support emphasizes the need for teacher training and effectiveness.



(not as helpful; complex so I did not read the complete article. )
 * Boden, Catherine and Darlene A. Brodeur (2010). Visual Processing of Verbal and Nonverbal Stimuli in Adolescents with Reading Disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities Jan./Feb 1999 32: 58-71.**

The abstract states: “Adolescents with RD demonstrated difficulties in processing rapidly presented verbal and nonverbal visual stimuli (written word), although the effect was magnified when they were processing verbal stimuli. Thus, the results of this study suggest that some youth with reading disabilities have visual temporal processing deficits that compound difficulties in processing verbal information during reading.”

Because of this, I wondered how these findings influence how one teachers students with learning disabilities. The article opened recognizing that "deficits in processing and segmenting of sounds that make up words (i.e., phonological processing) are a factor in reading disabilities" but the research hoped to explore other factors that paly a role in this (p. 2).



“This study was designed to obtain the first national picture of the characteristics of special educators who provide reading or English instruction in secondary day treatment and residential schools for youth with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) as well as their approach to reading instruction. Also, information was collected concerning the characteristics of the students in their classes. A national random sample of 123 (35%) reading or English teachers responded to a mail and online survey. No statistically significant differences existed between respondent and nonrespondent schools. Results indicated that teachers commonly hold master’s degrees and have an average of 9 years of teaching experience. Teachers reported using research-based instructional approaches but rarely integrate technology or peer tutoring into instruction. In many cases, teachers reported that students could not read well enough to gain basic information from text.”
 * Wilkerson, Kimber L. et.al. (2010). Reading Instruction in Secondary Day Treatment and Residential Schools for Youth with Emotional Behavioral Disorders. //Remedial and Special Education// 33(2): 78-88. Reprint in Sage Journals, [|www.rse.sagepub.com] doi:   10.1177/0741932510364546  **
 * Abstract**

I expected more suggestions from this article. In reality, it offered little suggestions for how to best support students with learning disabilities and actually seemed to draw assumptions about the teachers surveyed without knowing fully what the teachers were actually teaching. For instance, over half of the teachers surveyed stated that they pose comprehension questions to students and provide immediate feedback. However, the study does not indicate whether these teachers actually explicity teach students how to do ask the questions themselves. This sounds to me more like teacher-directed questioning, which contradicts reading interventions.

The end findings of this article provided suggestions that paralleled what other research indicated is important for the teaching of reading. In the end it seemed that the authors gave supporting research for what should be done in a classroom to best support struggling readers, but the teachers themselves did not show that they do any of this.
 * Teach students to recognize text structure
 * Use graphic or semantic organizers – research has shown that these can improve a student’s ability to recall information more than general comprehension; more research needs ot be done.
 * Access to technology is needed in order to use technology to support learning.
 * Peer tutoring (research supported but not used often by teachers surveyed)

One controversial statement, in my opinion, is a statement about the teaching of phonics at the secondary level. “Although the research base on effective reading instruction for adolescents with EBD is limited, we do know that use of explicit, systematic phonics instruction can significantly increase the reading performance of struggling adolescent readers in general (Shippen, Houchins, Steventon, & Sartor, 2005) as well as adolescents with LD (Calhoon,2005; Manset-Williamson & Nelson, 2005).” What? I never heard of this at any time in any literature about supporting struggling adolescent readers. I will have to read the cited researcher in order to understand these findings.





[|NCTE statement about adolescent readers]

[|Phonic Instruction for Older students: Just Say No]