Reading

Reading is not only a core academic subject, but also a core life subject. Students unable to read are many times more likely to drop out of school, and even if they complete school they are much less likely to enjoy vocational fulfillment than their reading peers. While up to 30% of students in school have significant difficulties learning to read, most students with disabilities face even greater challenges. Students with specific learning disabilities and other language-based disorders often have, as the hallmark of their disability, great difficulty learning to read. Students with sensory or processing deficits may be unable to adequately access the visual and auditory codes necessary to read. However, regardless of the etiology of reading difficulty, most students can learn to read given an appropriate systematic reading curriculum delivered through highly effective instruction and guided by a well-designed assessment system.

The National Reading Panel (2000) identified five core components necessary for a comprehensive reading program:

• Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992). Print is not involved. For example, asking the student: What sound do you hear at the beginning of the word cat? or Tell me a word that rhymes with tree?
• Phonics: The basic concept that letters represent segments of speech. Students are taught letter names, the relationships between letters and sounds, an understanding that these relationships are systematic and predictable, and the use of these relationships to read and write words.
• Fluency: The ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically with little conscious attention to decoding, thereby allowing the reader to focus attention on the meaning and message of the text. Text is read with appropriate intonation and expression that sounds very much like conversational speech.
• Vocabulary: Vocabulary development involves word knowledge, word instruction, word learning strategies and usage.
• Comprehension: The process of constructing meaning from written text. It includes such skills as: vocabulary knowledge, activating prior knowledge, ability to use and understand text structure, literal understanding of what is read, sequencing, summarizing, making inferences, predicting, and making connections between new and unknown information.

PaTTAN offers a variety of reading resources. The reading educational consultants (found by clicking on Who can help? on the left side of this page) have expertise in both disabilities and reading instruction. Braille and large print materials are available for the blind or visually impaired, and the Short Term Loan Program includes core and supplemental reading programs, assessment kits, training and resource kits, and reading technology devices.