The Miracle of Reading Will my child ever learn to read? For some kids, the hardest thing they ever do will be learning how to read. Find out the warning signs that you - and your child's teacher - should be watching for and why these are important in terms of the process of learning to read. It is difficult to know if you should be concerned and seek out support, or relax and give your child time but the bottom line is - the sooner difficulties are picked up on, the better. We invite Nancy Cushen White to discuss how children learn to read and where the process breaks down. And you might be surprised to find out the role handwriting plays in learning to read

1. LD EduTalk
info@LdEduTalk.org
The Miracle of Reading
Is Reading an Unnatural Act?
Nancy Cushen White, Ed.D., BCET, CALT
nancycushenwhite@gmail.com
May 15, 2014

2. “Cultural activities such as reading and arithmetic,
even though they are relatively recent inventions, call
on specific brain areas that are exquisitely attuned to
their function and are identical from one person to the
next and from one culture to another.” (with minor
variations)
“Similar brain circuits are activated in readers of
Japanese, Hebrew, English, and Italian, … (Bolger,
Perfetti, & Schneider, 2005). This result is something
of an enigma if we consider that “nothing in evolution
ever prepared our species to learn to read.” 2
Reading IS an Unnatural Act
Need for Neuronal Recycling
Stanislaus Dehaene, 2011

3.  5% will learn to read on their own.
 20-30% will learn to read relatively easily
once exposed to formal instruction. Most
methods will be effective.
 30-50% will find learning to read to be
difficult without direct systematic explicit
instruction.
 30-50% will find learning to read to be the
most difficult challenge they will ever face.
-Reid 3

4.  Reading scientists estimate that 95% of all
children can be taught to read at a level
constrained only by their reasoning and listening
comprehension abilities (Fletcher & Lyon, 1998).
 Critical components of effective reading
instruction:
Direct teaching of language structure with an
emphasis on decoding fluently and accurately.
Ample practice with skill application in meaningful
contexts is a component of effective teaching.
4

5. Specific areas in the brains of people with
dyslexia are less activated—underactivated—
during attempts to read.
These differences in activation patterns are
universal across cultures and languages.
5

6. 6
Pragmatics
SemanticsGrammar
Phonology
Phenomenal Learning
Oral Language—Speaking and Listening

7. 7

8.  Over-reliance on context and guessing
 Limited phoneme awareness
 Slow naming speedlack of fluency in word
recognition
 Inability to accurately identify printed words out
of context
8

9. NATIONAL READING PANEL [2000]
Specific Instructional Components
Essential for Effective Reading Instruction
Phonemic Awareness *Orthographic Awareness
Explicit Phonics *Morphological
Awareness
Encoding-Spelling
Decoding-Word Identification
Syllables
Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension
*additions recommended by Dr. Virginia Berninger
9

10. AUDITORY PROCESSING
Phonological Processing
Phonological Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
AUDITORY PROCESSING

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING

Phonological Memory Phonological Awareness Naming Speed

Phonemic Awareness
  
Phoneme Blending Phoneme Segmentation Phoneme Manipulation
10 NCW 2000

11.  Student’s ability to break up and read
longer, unfamiliar words accurately.
 Knowledge of language structure:
 spelling patterns [orthography]
 syllable generalizations [phonics]
 morphology [meaning].
 Benefits of explicit, systematic instruction that
involved teacher modeling and extensive
guided practice leading to independent
application—functional use. 11

12. Stripped of irrelevant features (e.g., font, case, and size), the letter string
is broken down in elementary components (e.g., single letters with
digraphs-bigramsgraphemes; syllables; and morphemes) that will be
used by the rest of the brain to compute sound and meaning.
interrupting
inter rupt ing
in ter rup ting
i n t er r u p t i ng
12

13.  Average predictability of words in 4th through 8th grade
text is 29.5%. Low frequency words are the least
guessable (Torgesen, 2004).
 Context enables the reader to predict accurately one out of
four words OVERALL (Gough & Hillinger, 1980).
 A higher level of predictability was shown for function
words (40%) because they are high frequency and contain
fewer letters (Torgesen, 2004).
 The content words that convey most of the meaning in
passages are predictable only 10% of the time
(Gough, 1983). Content words are often low frequency
words that vary in length and are most likely to be
13

14. The Role of Context
in Word Recognition
 Research has shown that the ability to apply
knowledge of letter-sound correspondences
to identify words is fundamental to
independent word recognition.
 Good readers rely on the letters in a word-
NOT context or pictures.
14

15.  The reader should be encouraged to pause
and study unknown words instead of to skip
or to guess an unfamiliar word
(Adams, 1990).
 It’s very difficult to comprehend text when
you are unable to identify (read—pronounce)
words accurately.
15

16. Word Level Reading Skills
Maggie Snowling, 2005
Predictors of
Word Identification
and Spelling
 Phoneme Awareness is
a critical factor in the
prediction of word-level
reading skills.
 Letter Knowledge
Consequences of Poor
Phoneme Awareness and
Limited Letter Knowledge
 Decoding Problems
Lacking strategy for
decoding new or
unfamiliar words
 Spelling Weaknesses
16

17. Consequences of Poor Phonology
Adams, 1990
17X17

18. Reading Comprehension
Maggie Snowling, 2005
Predictors of
Reading
Comprehension
Vocabulary
Knowledge
Grammatical
Sensitivity
Syntactical
Awareness
Efficient Decoding-
Word Identification
Skills
Consequences of
Poor Grammar
and Vocabulary
Language Comprehension
Problems
Inability to read with prosody
(chunk words into meaningful
phrases)
Problems recognizing and/or
pronouncing words with unfamiliar
(i.e., low frequency) orthographic
patterns OR grapheme-phoneme
associations
May Be Able to Identify Words18

19. Consequences of Poor Vocabulary &
Grammar
(Adams, 1990)
19
X
19

20.  Unique oral-motor movement for
pronunciation of each phoneme
 Unique sequence of arm movements for
formation of each letter of the alphabet for
writing
20

21.  Although many people believe that writing is
primarily a motor process, our research
supports a different point of view.
 The intactness of fine motor skills alone does
not account for handwriting problems as much
as the ability to code an identified language
symbol (a letter) in memory.
“The „Write Stuff‟ for Preventing and Treating Writing
Disabilities” By Virginia Berninger, University of
Washington-Seattle—IDA Perspectives (1999) 21

22.  Once children have been introduced to letter formation,
they must learn to retrieve and produce letters
automatically.
 Handwriting automaticity is a strong predictor of the
quality of composition in normally developing and disabled
writers.
 If letter production is automatic, memory space is freed up
for higher level composing processes, such as deciding
what to write about, what to say, and how to say it.
 The intactness of fine motor skills alone DOES NOT
ACCOUNT FOR HANDWRITING PROBLEMS AS MUCH AS
THE ABILITY TO CODE AN IDENTIFIED LANGUAGE
SYMBOL (A LETTER) IN MEMORY. 22

23. 23

24. Resources
 www.interdys.org
International Dyslexia Association (IDA)—Promoting literacy through research, education, and advocacy;
dedicated to helping individuals with dyslexia, their families and the communities that support them.
 www.imslec.org
International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC)—Establishes criteria,
evaluates, and accredits quality training courses for the professional preparation of multisensory structured
language education specialists (clinicians and teacher(s).
 www.altaread.org
Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA)—Certifies individuals trained in the remediation of written language
skills; a national professional member organization.
 www.allianceaccreditation.org
Alliance for Accreditation and Certification (Alliance)—Promotes standards for quality professional preparation; a
united association of organizations concerned with the accreditation of Multisensory Structured Language Education
(MSLE) training courses and the certification of graduates of these courses.
 www.ncld.org
NCLD connects parents and others with essential resources, provides educators with evidence-based tools and
engages advocates in public policy initiatives.
 www.wrightslaw.com
Wrightslaw provides parents, educators, advocates, and attorneys with accurate, reliable information about
special education law, education law, and advocacy for children with disabilities. 24