Bilingual speech-language pathologist Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan discusses effective assessment and instruction strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities, as well as ways to help encourage the active involvement of parents of ELLs with LD in their children’s schools.
School psychologists play a critical role in the lives of children who are struggling to learn. More and more, for example, school psychologists are leaders in developing and carrying out the assessments and placements decisions that impact students from the beginning of their school careers. With your help, schools can reduce the number of students who lag behind grade level and increase the number of successful readers.
Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student’s ability to learn new words.
The NICHD Early Interventions Project was designed to increase reading achievement in nine low-performing schools in the District of Columbia. This article describes the experience of one researcher working with these schools, and makes recommendations for policymakers and administrators.
Does your child need to be evaluated for a learning disability? Learn how to find the best professional, prepare for evaluation, and get the most information from the experience.
By actively and independently reading text, students simultaneously can build their word identification, fluency, vocabulary, and text-dependent comprehension skills. Learn about three key steps teachers can take to help students experience success with independent active reading.
Review well-established scientific findings about reading and their practical implications, for children with and without reading disabilities. In addition, consider some broader ways that science may be useful to educators and get suggestions for individual teachers interested in becoming more familiar with scientific research on reading.
Find out the characteristics of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that make writing difficult, and how use of technology can help support writing development. Results of a pilot study that utilized First Author® software to improve the writing of secondary students with ASD are described.
Instead of encouraging more and more small group teaching, districts should provide professional development in the most effective ways to deliver whole class instruction.
Texts that are challenging and that represent a wide range of genres and content areas need to play much bigger roles in comprehension instruction. These texts expose students to rich content and vocabulary and can help build knowledge.
When it comes to deciding what books to share with the young readers in your life, there is so much to choose from! Get pointed in the right direction with our themed booklists and articles on choosing and using children’s books at home and in the classroom.
Alphabet knowledge is the ability to recognize and name uppercase and lowercase letters, recognize letter symbols in print, and know that there are sounds associated with each letter. Alphabet knowledge is a key pre-literacy skill and lays the groundwork for future reading success.
