LIKELY CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICA READS CHALLENGE STUDENTS

While students of different ages have characteristics in common, as outlined in the last chapter, children who have difficulty with reading have some characteristics peculiar to them. These characteristics are usually in addition to the typical ones mentioned earlier.

WHAT KIND OF STUDENTS WILL I HAVE?

There are differences between the students you will be tutoring and students who do not need to be tutored. Johnston and Allington (1991) reviewed the reading literature and determined some commonalties among disabled readers.

• Disabled readers are nonreflective and do not self-monitor or self-correct their reading. In other words, they are not very aware if what they read makes sense. This probably means that they are so busy thinking about saying the words that they are unconcerned about whether the words make sense or not.

• Disabled readers are less positive about reading and writing and less inclined to write independently than readers who do not need extra help. This means that you could meet some resistance from your students. But that is understandable. Think about something that you are not very good at, e.g., bowling, swimming, golfing, sewing. Do you enjoy working at getting better at these things? Probably not. Unless you are having some measure of success as you practice these things you do not do well, you avoid them. This is certainly the case with disabled readers. What does this tell you about what you should do in tutoring sessions? Be sure that your students can do what you ask of them. Do not select material that will be very frustrating or uninteresting to them.
• Disabled readers are not likely to construct meaning actively and to see patterns in reading and writing. You may be amazed that some of your students are unable to see something that you think is obvious. For example, you may need to point out to your student that only the first letter is different in words like hat, bat, cat, mat, vat, pat, and sat. With disabled readers, you do not take anything for granted. You explain and then explain again. You overexplain. What is obvious to you will not necessarily be something they will notice.

• Disabled readers are not very persistent when faced with a frustrating task. They have had so much defeat, especially if they are older, that they just do not want to work at a task without having success. Their attitude is that after all, this will probably defeat them too.

• Disabled readers are not very strategic or flexible in the way that they read. When one cueing system fails, they have not developed the skills to try another. If they do not succeed at first attempt, they are done and quit.

• Disabled readers often have low self-esteem. They may make remarks such as, "I can't do this," or "I don't want to read out loud," or "People in my class make fun of me when I read." They think they cannot do certain things and they probably cannot. You need to be positive, give them tasks at which they can succeed, use lots of positive reinforcement, and make a visible record of their successes. For example, you might keep a chart of the books they have read, the words they have learned, or the number of times they have gone to the library.

• Disabled readers need a great deal of positive reinforcement. Because they have encountered so many difficulties in learning to read, they are easily discouraged. This down-in-the-dumps attitude can be tempered by success and having successes acknowledged. Honest praise is motivating to most people but this is especially true of children who have difficulty with reading.

• Disabled readers are often not as imaginative as children who do not have reading difficulties. In general, disabled readers do not like fanciful books very much. For example, a lovely book of Russian folktales may be very appealing to you but it probably will not be to your students. They need personal, practical things that relate to their lives. For example, it would be far better for you to use the Mercer Mayer's Boy, Dog, Frog book series when having your students dictate a story to accompany a wordless book than David Wiesner's Tuesday or Free Fall. In the Mayer books, a boy, a dog, and a frog have some adventures going fishing. In one of the Wiesner books, a boy goes to sleep, travels to a far-off land of castles and royalty, rides a pig, and floats through the air on a leaf. This is not the kind of story to which most disabled readers can relate. They can read and enjoy rhinoceroses getting on buses (The Bus Ride) and monkeys jumping on a bed (Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed) but not real people doing unrealistic things.

• Disabled readers make different kinds of errors from good readers. While good readers make meaningful substitutions, self-corrections, omissions, and insertions, disabled readers are more likely to give words that are graphically similar to the printed word, make meaningless substitutions, or nonsense word substitutions.

• Disabled readers are often learning disabled (LD) which means that they have difficulty reading but that there is no explanation for their reading difficulty. They have the intelligence to learn and there is no educational or cultural deprivation. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often coexists with a learning disability. Therefore, your students could be more likely to have difficulty paying attention or staying in their seats than children who do not need your services.

• Disabled readers are more likely to see reading as primarily a decoding, word-calling process than good readers who are more likely to search for meaning.

KINDS OF PROBLEMS THAT CHILDREN IN THE PROGRAM MAY HAVE

Walker (1996) writes that the ultimate goal of reading is to construct meaning with text (p.69). In order to do this, the reader must be able to get the print off the page (print processing) and know what the words are and be able to understand what those words mean (meaning processing). According to Walker, print processing involves predicting, monitoring, and elaborating what the words on the page look like. Meaning processing involves predicting, monitoring, and elaborating the author's intended meaning. When the reader begins having difficulty understanding the meaning, he usually shifts attention to words, or the print.

If you think back to Chall's Stages of Reading in Chapter 3, you will recall that children through stage 2 are more concerned with print and less concerned with meaning. A sharp tutor can distinguish between print and meaning difficulties. When a reader encounters an unfamiliar word, he often guesses at what it might be. If that guess makes sense, but does not resemble the correct word, he is relying on semantic cues and probably has difficulty with print. On the other hand, if the guess does not make sense within the context (like for look ), then the reader is relying on graphophonic cues and has a problem with meaning.

The tutors should pay attention to the kinds of errors that readers make. When guesses at unknown words make sense, the problem is probably with print. When guesses at unknown words do not make sense, the difficulty may lie with meaning. In many cases, the child who has problems with print is labeled as dyslexic. Sometimes, the child who has meaning processing difficulties also has limited intellectual capacity. This, of course, is not always the case.

The most challenging student to teach is one who has problems with both print and meaning. With children who have difficulties in both areas, instruction must be directed to developing both the graphophonic and semantic cueing systems.

Children who have difficulty with syntax often have language processing problems. In some cases, they are children who have little experience with language. Perhaps they are not spoken to or allowed to speak at home. They have had few opportunities to learn how language is supposed to sound. With them, a great deal of emphasis must be put on reading stories to them, giving them a sense of story, and developing their expressive language.

In addition to the kinds of difficulties mentioned above, the children you will be seeing are more likely to be restless and inattentive than children who do not have reading difficulties. Their attention spans are often short, necessitating the need for the tutor to prepare more activities for a session with a disabled reader than would be necessary for a session with a good reader.

MATERIAL SELECTION

While you can use many of the same kinds of materials with disabled readers that you might use with good readers, there are some things that you should keep in mind when selecting materials for the children you tutor. This is assuming that you will be selecting the material. In some cases, the teacher with whom you work may make those determinations.

Because their attention spans may be short, meaningful material that is not lengthy may be good. For example, magazine articles, riddles, and short books are appropriate for children who cannot attend for long periods of time.

Learning is more likely to occur with disabled readers if the material you have them read is personal to them or at least relevant to their lives. For example, a story about NASCAR races, Double Dutch, Beanie Babies, or roller blading could capture the interest of your students. Remember, they have often met with a great deal of failure in school and they may not be very motivated to read. While good literature is the material of choice for classrooms, disabled readers may be more receptive to material that is not as ideal. The goal is to improve their reading and this should be done with whatever material, within good taste, that will appeal to them. So think about using material to which they can relate when you make selections for your students.

Books about real life events are often appealing to children who have reading difficulties. Some disabled readers come from impoverished situations. They may not have had many experiences or opportunities to think beyond their immediate surroundings. Whatever the reason, disabled readers relate better to books about events they might have experienced rather than unknown things.

Often you may not have enough familiarity with a particular student to know what might appeal to him. In that case, you might provide a variety of books and let the student select what he wants to read. Besides the student having something he will likely be interested in reading, the student gains some sense of control in the tutoring setting this way.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

In working with your students, you should respect their differences but avoid making them feel different. Disabled readers AND non-disabled are alike in many ways but disabled readers have unique additional characteristics.

Oh, that it were my chief delight

To do the things I ought!

Then let me try with all my might

To mind what I am taught.

--Ann and Jane Taylor