Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects a child’s handwriting. Children with dysgraphia usually have other problems such as difficulty with written expression. Learn more about causes, the importance of early assessment, dysgraphia and spelling, and effective instructional strategies that strengthen written language skills.
Based on research and effective practice, these strategies help students learn how to coordinate and use a set of key comprehension techniques before, during, and after they read a variety of texts.
Interactive writing is a dynamic instructional method where teacher and students work together to construct a meaningful text while discussing the details of the writing process. The writing demands of the Common Core standards require explicit and efficient teaching guidance, which is at the heart of interactive writing. Learn four specific ways teachers can adapt this practice when working with children in grades 2-5 who are more developed writers.
Interviews with 12 adults on the autism spectrum provide insight into their own development of literacy skills, their present habits and challenges, and suggestions for teachers of students with ASD.
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.
Much vocabulary is learned without formal teaching. We gain words from conversation, observation, television/media, and reading. However, research shows that explicitly teaching vocabulary can measurably improve reading comprehension — if we teach the right words well enough. Here are five key principles to effective vocabulary instruction.
What should fluency instruction look like? And what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers’? This article can help practitioners effectively use fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.
Three renowned reading and writing experts — Steve Graham, Louisa Moats, and Susan Neuman — address why writing is important, what the latest research tells us, and what educators and parents can do to support our children’s development as writers.
If 40 percent of all third-graders are not reading adequately today, reducing this substantially by the time children being born today reach third grade will be an enormous undertaking.
Learn about an early intervening system being developed for young children, called Recognition and Response, designed to help parents and teachers respond to learning difficulties in young children who may be at risk for learning disabilities as early as possible, beginning at age 3 or 4, before they experience school failure and before they are referred for formal evaluation and possible placement in special education.
This guidance from the International Reading Association represents a consensus of the thinking of literacy leaders in the field who support thoughtful implementation of the Standards for student literacy achievement. Seven key topics are addressed: use of challenging texts; foundational skills; comprehension; vocabulary; writing; content area literacy; and diverse learners.
Visual structure adds a physical or visual component to tasks to help students with ASD to understand how an activity should be completed. Get ideas on how to implement visual structure in your classroom and support your students’ independence.
The curriculum framework offered here is a model for Common Core planning and implementation that can be adapted to K-12 in self-contained or departmental settings.
Direct instruction, teaching spelling patterns, frequent repetition, and support for mastery of highest frequency words are key to sight word instruction.
Many young readers are puzzled by the rules and exceptions of spelling. Research shows that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge. Learn more about the relationships between letters and sounds and how a proper understanding of spelling mechanics can lead to improved reading.
It is possible for educators to make better choices about how and when to teach to the test than the alarmist newspaper articles and editorials would seem to suggest. This article from the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement aims to help readers think beyond simple compliance with federal law or basic implementation of programs.
A science of reading requires that our prescriptions for teaching be tempered by rigorous instructional evaluations. If a claim hasn’t been tried out and found effective, then the claims aren’t part of reading science.
Phonics instruction teaches the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. To read, children need to understand the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Decoding is when we use letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech.
