Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Ted Hasselbring, Professor of Special Education, Peabody College at Vanderbilt. Dr. Hasselbring developed Read 180 which is a reading intervention program that we use in Iredell Statesville Schools. The following bullets are highlights from Dr. Hasselbrings speech.
- Struggling readers have two problems – unable to decode and read connected text and unable to comprehend text
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- Fluency – accuracy and speed in things you do well – without fluency, no application of skills and watching kids read without fluency is painful to student and adults
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- Human processing – working memory – the more fluent we are with low level skills, the less working memory we tie up for low level processing, so we can use working memory for higher level skills – struggling readers use too much of working memory for low level skills like decoding
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- Neural pathways – these are the connections our brain hardwires, the more pathways hardwired, the less likely we are to lose memory later in life
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- Neural pathways – word recognition and retrieval is easier when we have neural pathways – kind of like having a file cabinet full of stuff but no filing system or retrieval system – kids develop neural pathways based on experiences
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- Fluency requires retrieval of words from long-term memory – through neural pathways
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- Our working memory can handle 7 chunks of information + or – 2 chunks – elementary children can handle 5 chunks + or – 2
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- Our working memory can handle the chunks for about 20-30 seconds
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- We have to give kids enough practice or rehearsal to move words from working memory to long term memory
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- We must move away from work sheets and computerized work sheets – these help you move long term to short term for processing, however, do little to move from short term to long term
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- Comprehension – readers (adult and student) link text to own experiences and vocabulary to make sense of what they are reading – background knowledge is very important, however, most of the text material we use students have very little background knowledge and they see no relevance in the material
What should happen with information and training like this? The actual use of this information and research could go a long way in helping more children read and be successful. In our school system teachers are expected to work in teams at least one hour per week and look at common assessment of student progress to learn how children are progressing. Many of our teachers will find that struggling readers are the children that are not successful. All of our teams of teachers are then expected to develop strategies to provide interventions for these students who are struggling and challenges for those students who are meeting or exceeding expectations. These meetings take time. A few of our teachers resent the use of this time or they spend the time in these meetings complaining about having to meet. Teachers say they need this time to plan. However, the synergy of the group with the appropriate use of data and research on best instructional strategies will always create better PLANS than individual teacher plans.