Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.
Special Education
Many struggling readers can receive additional support from their school. Students with reading or reading-related disabilities may be eligible to receive supplemental instruction from special education teachers who can provide in-class or out-of-class support, depending on the student's needs. Navigating the unfamiliar waters of special education, though, can be overwhelming for parents, teachers, and students. This section contains helpful information about the basics of special education: the process, the IEP, and inclusion.
This section contains 26 articles.
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Documenting Communication with the School About Special Services
When dealing with a bureaucracy, and school districts are bureaucracies, you need to keep detailed records. Logs, journals, and calendars provide answers and support memories and testimonies. This article provides examples of how to keep a paper trail.
Fighting the Good Fight: How to Advocate for Your Students Without Losing Your Job
Teachers: How do you convince your principal, fellow teachers, and other school staff to help the student in your class who has a learning disability? Rick Lavoie, world-renowned expert, speaker, and author on teaching children with LD, tells you how to get your voice heard. Learn how to handle common road blocks and become a proactive and successful advocate in the hallways, the teacher's lounge, and the administrative suite.
Understanding the Special Education Process
This overview walks parents through each step of the special education process. PACER Center, author of this article, describes what happens from the time a child is referred for evaluation through the development of an individualized education program (IEP).
Advocating for Your Child: Getting Started
When an advocate negotiates with the school on a special needs child's behalf, the odds are increased that the child will get an appropriate education. Learn who can advocate, what they do, and how you can get started advocating for your child.
This article discusses the challenges in providing psychoeducational services to the rapidly increasing minority populations in the U.S. and offers a brief elaboration of the role and function of school counselors and school psychologists and how they can meet the mental health and educational needs of this large and growing population.
SMART IEPs (Step 3): Use Objective Information
When a doctor develops a treatment plan for a sick child, the doctor uses objective data from diagnostic tests. Your child's individualized education program is similar to a medical treatment plan, and you need objective tests to know that your child is acquiring reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.
SMART IEPs (Step 4): Write Measurable (Not Abstract) Goals
Individualized education program (IEP) goals cannot be broad statements about what a child will accomplish. Goals that cannot be measured are non-goals. Learn how to help the IEP team devise specific, measurable, realistic goals.
Learn what makes a strong individualized education program (IEP) and the five components of a SMART IEP.
SMART IEPs (Step 2): Create Goals and Objectives
Too often annual goals listed in an individualized education program are not specific and measurable. Find out how to avoid this pitfall.
SMART IEPs (Step 1): Start with Baseline Information on Your Child
This article explains how to consider your child's present levels of academic performance and use baseline data to develop goals and objectives for a individualized education program.
Assessment accommodations help people with learning disabilities display their skills accurately on examinations. Teachers, learn how to test the true knowledge of your students. Don't test their ability to write quickly if you want to see their science skills! Parents, these pointers will help you assure that your children are tested fairly.
Understanding Assessment Options for IDEA-eligible Students
The No Child Left Behind law requires each school test students in Reading/Language Arts & Math each year in grades 3-8, and at least once more in grades 10-12. In some cases, children eligible for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) services may be able to access testing accommodations or even alternate tests, but parents need to fully understand the implications and potential consequences of participation in the various testing options.
No Child Left Behind: Making the Most of Options for IDEA-eligible Students
If a Title I school repeatedly underperforms, federal law provides opportunities for students to change schools or obtain additional instructional support. This parent advocacy brief looks at the information parents of students with disabilities need to know and understand in order to maximize these options.
Making the "No Child Left Behind Act" Work for Children Who Struggle to Learn
This article provides an overview of the federal No Child Left Behind law and includes information to help parents use provisions of NCLB to ensure that their child has access to appropriate instruction.
IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is our nation's special education law. Below you'll find important information about IDEA 2004, which went into effect on July 1, 2005.
Research-Supported Assessment-Intervention Links for Reading and Writing
This article discusses current research-supported instructional practices in reading and writing. It also reviews alternatives to ability-achievement discrepancy in identifying students for special education services, as well as introduces the idea that ability-achievement discrepancies should be based on specific cognitive factors that are relevant to specific kinds of learning disabilities rather than Full Scale IQ.
From annual goals to special education services, there are certain categories of information required by law to be included in a student's Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Learn what these categories are in this overview of the content of IEP's.
Inclusive classrooms are classrooms that revolve around individualizing instruction. This list of classroom practices for including students with disabilities can also serve as a roadmap for improving the education of all children.
Inclusion means ensuring that children with disabilities go to school with their non-disabled peers, while providing them with the individual instruction and support they need. In this article, read about inclusion and how it differs from mainstreaming.
Parents and teachers as well as other professionals are required by law to be involved in writing a student's IEP. Find out about the members of an IEP team and the roles they play.
"Your suggestions and invaluable information have helped my child, who has a reading disability. He is now reading at every chance he gets."
~ Ellen B.
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Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers research-based and best-practice information on teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle. It is an educational service of public television station WETA in Washington, D.C.
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