Reading strategies

Reading Strategies for Students With Mild Disabilities
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Teaching children with mild disabilities to read can be a challenging task for even the most seasoned teacher. In order to be successful, teachers need to be knowledgeable about the big five of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). While the ultimate goal of readingis comprehension, several of the aforementioned skills must be in place to meet this goal (Tolman, 2005). Despite knowledge of the big five, other skills such as syllabication and structural analysis, subsumed under phonics and vocabulary instruction, are needed in order for children to progress from word-callers to becoming fluent readers who can efficiently comprehend text. |

Among students withdisabilities, research has shown that they perform poorly on various phonological tasks such as (a) phonological deletion, (b) phonological detection, (c) phonological oddity, (d) phonemic segmentation, (e) knowledge of letters, (f) blending phonemes, (g) phoneme counting, (h) rapid letter naming, (i) syllabication, and (j) pronouncing nonwords (Bhattacharya, 2006; Manis, Custodio, &Szeszulski, 1993; Manis, Doi, & Bhadha, 2000; O'Conner & Jenkins, 1997). Some claim that phonological skills are the best predictors of success in learning to read words (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004). Yet others (Hammill, 2004) have found phonemic factors were only a moderate predictor of reading success and, in fact, found the largest predictors of reading to be writingconventions (spelling and punctuation), written language, and letter knowledge. What many of these studies point toward is that early reading activities should be composed of a variety of integrated activities that include phonological awareness, syllabication, print awareness, and early writing skills.
Teaching Early Reading Skills
For teachers, the research on learning how to read means that they shouldteach skills and activities that assist children in breaking the code of reading. It is important to remember that reading involves more than just teaching students a collection of phonological skills in daily activities. Reading is a combination of skills that build slowly over time. It is a combination of reading activities: phonological awareness activities (i.e., learning the code), sightwords, and connected reading (i.e., using words in context) that enable children to actually read. The end goal of teaching phonological awareness and structural analysis strategies is for children to apply these skills during reading. Therefore, teachers should present phonological awareness activities prior to reading so that students can integrate them into their reading. Similarly, teachersshould present syllabication and structural analysis strategies prior to reading so that students can become fluent during reading as they encounter unknown words.
Before discussing how to teach early reading skills, some common terms that help clarify their use in this article are presented in Table 1.
The key to reading seems to be frequent exposure to reading skills and strategies, particularlythose skills that will cross over or generalize from one activity to another. For example, if working on the phoneme m during a phonological awareness activity, use it in context with words as children learn sight words or as they read m words in basal stories. The more generalization that can be taught in class, the easier it will be for students to use that skill or strategy in a new context. Ofcourse, drill and practice activities with immediate feedback will ensure that children master skills and prevent them from practicing errors or miscues. As most teachers know, it is much harder to fix a well-learned error than teaching it properly the first time.
For many students with disabilities, teaching reading skills and strategies involves explicit instruction. Direct instruction can be...