Reading Fluency for College [Premium]

Reading Fluency for College [Premium]

Recently we were contacted by a student who wanted to improve his reading fluency before attending college. He had completed a full course of “Wilson and Orton-Gillingham” yet his reading was still slow and effortful. He asked, “Is there anything I can do to improve my reading to help me be successful in college?”   ANSWER: First of all, good for you for looking ahead and preparing yourself for college. It is possible to get through college with slow effortful reading, but probably only if you’re competent with assistive technology and can listen to all of your books instead of reading them traditionally. Although most colleges and universities are required to make “reasonable accommodations,” schools and individual faculty members can vary, and practical issues – […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
Learning Irregular Words: Activities and Games [Premium]

Learning Irregular Words: Activities and Games [Premium]

Irregular words don’t fit the standard sounding out convention, but because they can occur commonly in text, they need additional practice to be recognized quickly.   How do you help students practice, but not be guilty of “drill and kill”? Rote memorization is also difficult for many dyslexic students so that not only is repetition inefficient, it often introduces unwanted errors. Having a toolkit of games and various activities to change up the learning practice can make the session fly by and you may be surprised how much better the information is remembered later. In the videos below, check out low tech ways to change things up and make practice more fun and less drudgery.         Because there are so many spelling […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
Clever Ways To Practice Repeated Reading [Premium]

Clever Ways To Practice Repeated Reading [Premium]

It was in the late 1970’s that educational researchers began to question the practice of reading aloud different tasks as a way to make children more fluent readers. With this approach, every new day saw new challenges reading aloud for struggling readers so that they failed to gain proficiency, and if anything were more likely to develop a dislike or avoidance of reading. What actually showed greater success with reading fluency, was giving students repeated practice with the same passage. The general approach is to have a student or teacher pick a passage (a quote, poem, excerpt from a poem) that is 50-300 words long. The teacher or partner reads it aloud, then the student (echo reading). The goal is to have the student read […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
Resources For Reading Fluency [Premium]

Resources For Reading Fluency [Premium]

Reading fluency is usually defined as an ability to read easily with little effort…with good accuracy, speed, expression, and comprehension. Reading fluency practice doesn’t take the place of decoding work, but it can be an important step that makes it likely that a person will become a lifelong reader. Strategies to improve reading fluency are many, including choral reading, echo reading, reading along with audiobooks, readers theater, sentence trees and more. As April Karl describes in the video below, reading books with repetitive text can also give student practice at reading words with a different tone.   The second video below is an example from McGraw Hill showing older students implementing practices like choral reading, Reader’s Theater, and paired reading in small groups. Some researchers […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
Bridging the Gap to Reading Long Words [Premium]

Bridging the Gap to Reading Long Words [Premium]

 In our last post, we wrote about the 3rd grade gap or wall. Dyslexic students typically get through the hard slog of phonemic awareness and then parents and teachers breathe a sigh of relief. Many times, the extra work fades away and students are integrated back into their usual classroom routine. All seems well, but a problem may remain. Reading remains effortful and the complexity of the text goes up. Students may not be able to keep up. With little extra help and too little time to complete assignments, the “guess and go” approach may dominate the reading strategy so that the gap between peers increases. A large part of the problem may be that students have not effective strategy to read long words. These problems can come […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
Choosing the Right Reading Level Books for Students with Dyslexia [Premium]

Choosing the Right Reading Level Books for Students with Dyslexia [Premium]

It’s often told to parents that a “Five Finger Rule” can help you choose whether a book is at the right reading level for a student. The rule states that if a student misses five or more words, it may be too hard, no words and it might be too easy, and three words and it’s  ‘just right’. The problem for dyslexic students is that the “Five Finger Rule” may prevent them accessing print information at their intellectual level and if reading aloud is the guide for the rule, then it’s possible they may never be granted access to higher level books even if they are university professors! In fact, pioneering work by Rosalie Fink (see research paper below for Premium members), showed that accomplished […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more
[Premium] Q & A: Can People with Dyslexia Learn Speed Reading ?

[Premium] Q & A: Can People with Dyslexia Learn Speed Reading ?

  This question comes up frequently. Can older dyslexic students and adults learn ‘speed reading’ and if so, how? The short answer is YES, but it’s only usually a subset of people who can do this. Young children who are still struggling with decoding are not good candidates for speed reading, but some upper elementary and older folks may be able to do it – although when they do they will likely be skimming and not reading all the words. Recently a  member of our community volunteered to share her son’s experiences with speed reading. Rather than doing software or an app, she took the low-tech approach with a workbook and exercises that had her timing her son as he read books of their own […]

To access this post, you must be a Premium supporter.

read more

LEARN MORE AS A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER

Dyslexia and Gifted: Course for Psychologists

Dyslexia for Teachers Course

Categories

SPONSORS

    Discover Your Dyslexic MIND Strengths
                                    Free

 

 

 


Amazon Affiliate Notice

Dyslexic Advantage is an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a link that takes you to the Amazon store, Dyslexic Advantage may earn money on qualifying purchases. Clicking HERE to enter Amazon and making a purchase may support Dyslexic Advantage. Thank you!

LEARN MORE AS A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER

Dyslexia | Dyslexic Advantage