Reading Disabilities – Treatment

Transcript

“The treatment for individuals with a reading disability has a lot of research behind it. And we know the answers. We know how to help children with reading problems. What’s really great news about children with reading disabilities, is we can help them. What’s really important about that is that we help them early. As early as possible, five, six, seven years old, that we get in there, give them intensive instruction in the structure of language. Multi-sensory learning, learning about the language structure of English and we can teach them. Now it does take much longer. It takes more intensive training and intervention to help these children and rewire those brains. So that that circuitry, brain circuitry is working, but it is possible. The earlier we can intervene with learners, the better results we’re going to have. There are a lot of reading programs out there. Now, many of them are quite effective as a parent or advocate for child with a reading disability.

You always want to look at the research behind it. Is it research? Does it touch on phonics? Does it teach phonological awareness? Is there reading fluency parts to that? Is there reading vocabulary development and reading comprehension pieces to that? The other factor too, is are they teaching grammar? So the national reading panel back, it’s old research now, but there’s nothing new under the sun. And they’ve just confirmed that those five parts, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency, and comprehension. Those are the five essential components of reading that every effective reading program should entail for children to learn to read. Some children need much more time on phonics and phonological awareness than others. Those with reading impairments are going to need much more intensive instruction. What’s really great in recent years is there’s a lot of computer-based reading programs. Now that can be very effective for children as well. Reading programs need to be individualized, so that we’re not teaching a child who understands phonics. Oh, we’re spending a lot of time in phonics. Maybe they need a lot of time in multi-sensory learning so that they’re getting that visual imagery of words. If they’re having trouble with that part of the language. So it’s important to understand where a child has need in reading and specifically spend time in those areas of development.”