Special Needs Presentation: Students with Reading Difficulties

*Structure:

1. Context: facts: how many children are experiencing reading difficulties?

2. Why is it necessary for children to learn to read and to target reading problems
in EC?
3. Outline the situations you may see (problems) of students with reading
difficulties: recognising the early signs
4. What strategies can you implement to assist those children with reading
difficulties (reading strategies; quality reading program, the physical
environment, the social environment)

*Reading difficulties is not referring to children with disabilities such as Dyslexia,

it refers to the children who experience reading difficulties as a whole

Facts

-Up to 30 percent of children can be impacted by reading difficulties in one

school; not as a result of disabilities or other special needs
-To this day the highest number of referrals given in schools is due to difficulties
with reading

Identifying students with reading difficulties

• May lack phonemic awareness: spoken words are separate sound units;
identifying these sounds
• Look at early spelling attempts as spelling may demonstrate a lack of phonemic
awareness *Phonemic awareness underlines everything; it is a basis for reading
• May recognise a word on a certain day and then it is forgotten by the next
morning (issues with sight vocab)
• May struggle with understanding meaning beyond the page
*Response to intervention model

-The child will avoid reading

-Child stumbles/has problems when they read aloud or silently (they repeat
things over, mispronounced or misread; this is consistent, read slowly)
- The child will avoid reading aloud as it portrays the problems that they are
having
- Poor reading comprehension
- -May be really good at maths but turned off when they have to do a word
problem in maths
Why is reading necessary?

-EC is the most significant time of life. Children learn more in early childhood
than any other period. Up until eight years old children are rapidly absorbing
information and new brain connections are constant. It is necessary to assist
those children who may be experiencing reading problems in early childhood.
-Reading is a basic skill needed for everyday life
-If children do not learn to read efficiently it can place them at risk as reading
intervenes into all subjects
-Good literacy skills leads to high self esteem
-Reading prepares for the future: good reading skills enables for good
employment opportunities
*Many children who have special educational needs have difficulties with reading,
if this is not recognised it is likely that they will fall increasingly behind their peers

Strategies for students experiencing reading difficulties

-Programs: Reading Recovery, Success for All, QuickSmart, MULTILIT, Reading

Rescue
-Tutoring strategies/activities: Games and apparutus, Multisensory approach,
Language-experience approach, cloze procedure, Repeated reading and the
Impress Method, Technology: ICT and reading
-Teaching approaches: Shared book approach, guided reading, reading aloud,
sustained silent reading

• Reading needs to be interesting and differentiated

• Students need to know why they are reading a text
• Ask students what they think about the text before reading
• Students can set comprehension questions for one another
• Discuss summarising
• Use graphic organizers
• Comprehension: instruction in applying comprehension strategies, direct
explanation, modelling, thinking aloud, abundant guided practice
• Synthetic phonics
• Use word building activities
• Match books to the level that the child is at