Competent Reader, Disabled Reader


Book Description

In the past frustration with experimental reports had caused educators to dismiss the entire reading research enterprise. Originally published in 1982, this book attempts to abstract those experimental results relevant to developing effective reading programs. The book concentrates on the more mechanical aspects of reading skill such as visual discrimination ability, visual and auditory memory, visual-to-phonetic translation skills, and attentional strategies. These skills it is argued, account for the major proportion of variance in reading ability. The research on both competent and incompetent reading indicates the special importance of such skills to reading. The book contains three sections. Section I reviews the experimental evidence on competent reading. The review highlights consistent threads of evidence and provides a description of the competent reader’s strategies for analyzing text. Section II reviews research on poor reading. This section evaluates the concept of dyslexia and stresses that reading problems are not uniform. Section III maintains that the information about competent reading strategies and the impediments to acquiring those strategies should guide educators in evaluating instructional materials and facilitate the diagnosis of reading failure. Today it can be read in its historical context.




Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four-Blocks® Way, Grades 1 - 3


Book Description

Meet the learning needs and preferences of all students using Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four-Blocks(R) Way for students in grades 1–3. This 144-page book provides a glimpse into an inclusion special-education classroom that uses the Four-Blocks(R) Literacy Model. This wonderful collection of ideas, strategies, and resources includes information on Self-Selected Reading, Guided Reading, Writing, and Working with Words. It also includes strategies for reading and writing success in special-education classrooms, variations for students with disabilities, teacher's checklists, IEP goal suggestions, examples of assistive technology, and answers to commonly asked questions. The book supports the Four-Blocks(R) Literacy Model and provides a list of children's literature that can be used in lessons.




Handbook of Cognitive, Social, and Neuropsychological Aspects of Learning Disabilities


Book Description

First Published in 1986. This is the companion volume to the Handbook of Cognitive, Social, and Neuropsychological Aspects of Learning Disabilities-Vol. 1. As such, it is a continuation of the theme and approach taken in the first volume. There are four thematic sections, comprised of three to four chapters each, dealing with cognitive (micro-level and macro-level), social, and neurological characteristics of learning-disabled individuals.




Measuring Reading Competence


Book Description

This book concerns measuring reading skills. It is not meant to be a compre hensive survey of reading research or a review of all possible approaches to reading measurement (although considerable attention is given to both subjects). Instead, the purpose of this book is to present a coherent, theoretically based approach to measuring reading competence. The ability to measure a phenomenon is an important prerequisite for scientific analysis. As Lord Kelvin said, "One's knowledge of science begins when he can measure what he is speaking about and express it in numbers." Unfortunately, not just any numbers will do. Presently available reading tests provide their users with a plethora of numbers-age levels, percentiles, grade equivalents-but their scientific value is questionable. The problem is that there is more to scientific measurement than merely assigning numbers to arbitrarily chosen behaviors. Scientific measurement occurs only within the confines of a theory, and most reading tests are atheoretical. Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth in reading research.







Reading and Learning Disabilities


Book Description

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV


Book Description

The Handbook of Reading Research is the research Handbook for the field. Each volume has come to define the field for the period of time it covers. Volume IV follows in this tradition. The editors extensively reviewed the reading research literature since the publication of Volume III in 2000, as portrayed in a wide array of research and practitioner-based journals and books, to identify the themes and topics covered. As in previous volumes, the focus is on reading research, rather than a range of literate practices. When taken as a set, the four volumes provide a definitive history of reading research. Volume IV brings the field authoritatively and comprehensively up-to-date.




Understanding Reading


Book Description

Understanding Reading revolutionized reading research and theory when the first edition appeared in 1971 and continues to be a leader in the field. In the sixth edition of this classic text Smith’s purpose remains the same: to shed light on fundamental aspects of the complex human act of reading – linguistic, physiological, psychological, and social – and of what is involved in learning to read. The text critically examines current theories, instructional practices, and controversies, covering a wide range of disciplines but always remains accessible. Careful attention is given to the ideological clash that continues between whole language and direct instruction and currently permeates every aspect of theory and research into reading and reading instruction. In every edition, including the present one, Smith has steadfastly resisted giving teachers a recipe for teaching reading, while aiming to help them make their own decisions, based on research about reading, which is accessible to anyone, and their experience and personal knowledge of their students, which only they possess. To aid readers in making up their own minds, each chapter concludes with a brief statement of "Issues." Understanding Reading, Sixth Edition is matchless in integrating a wide range of topics relative to reading while, at the same time, being highly readable and user-friendly for instructors, students, and practitioners.




Handbook of Reading Disability Research


Book Description

Bringing together a wide range of research on reading disabilities, this comprehensive Handbook extends current discussion and thinking beyond a narrowly defined psychometric perspective. Emphasizing that learning to read proficiently is a long-term developmental process involving many interventions of various kinds, all keyed to individual developmental needs, it addresses traditional questions (What is the nature or causes of reading disabilities? How are reading disabilities assessed? How should reading disabilities be remediated? To what extent is remediation possible?) but from multiple or alternative perspectives. Taking incursions into the broader research literature represented by linguistic and anthropological paradigms, as well as psychological and educational research, the volume is on the front line in exploring the relation of reading disability to learning and language, to poverty and prejudice, and to instruction and schooling. The editors and authors are distinguished scholars with extensive research experience and publication records and numerous honors and awards from professional organizations representing the range of disciplines in the field of reading disabilities. Throughout, their contributions are contextualized within the framework of educators struggling to develop concrete instructional practices that meet the learning needs of the lowest achieving readers.




The Role of Fluency in Reading Competence, Assessment, and instruction


Book Description

First published in 2001. This is a special issue Volume 5, Number 3, from 2001 of Scientific Studies of Reading that looks at the DNA of reading fluency in scientific inquiry accounts. The contributors offer a selection of essays seeks to establish that that fluent reading is plainly developmental and represents an outcome of well-specified sub lexical and lexical processes and skills developed for most children over a bounded period of pedagogical time, rather than in just the school setting.




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