Reading There are numerous ways to improve reading skills, ranging from the more auditory, part-whole phonetic method to the more visual whole-part whole language approach. As many students learn differently (LD), I believe that it is necessary to implement not only reading programs near both end of the above polar opposites but many other approaches within those two theoretical extremes. Here are a few comments about some reading packages that I have successfully used with girls and boys who do not grasp basic reading skills in the conventional mainstream way.
The Merill Reading Skilltext Series
One package that I enjoy using and have found most meaningful for special needs students has been the Merill Reading Skilltext Series, a logically planned supplementary skills reading package. The purpose of this program is to provide materials that will steadily improve a student's basic text decoding, oral reading and reading comprehension skills. The program achieves this goal by providing carefully devised, systematic, skill development exercises based on interesting stories. Each of the eleven (11) readers in the program contains a series of two page stories. The left hand page shows a complete story and the right hand page is most complete with meaningful exercises. I will often audio tape both pages for ease of decoding and comprehension. In this way, the auditory and the visual learning channels are being used concurrently. I do not allow the students to write in the booklet. Instead, I have them copy out the questions and fill in-the-blank statements et al so as to upgrade their near-point copying skills.
Enjoying the Art of Reading
I believe that learning to read ought to be an enjoyable adventure. Such has been my experience with another reading package, namely, the Encyclopedia Brown series of pocketbooks. Simply stated for here, each pocketbook contains a series of short detective-type stories. Besides the reading of intriguing episodes, students must comprehend specific settings, understand various plots and be able to identify with interesting characters before solving a real life problem. As an example of a similar reading exercise whereby you first read a story and then try to solve the mystery, click here. To discover the splendor of reading some of the original writings from religion, science, and the humanities, click here. And finally, if you enjoy the art of storytelling, click here to read some interesting stories.
Science Fiction Stories
A third success story has been the usage of a series of science fiction readers from the Sprint Paperback Library series, five complete novelettes especially created to assist less able students in the upper elementary grades. Each novelette is of a high interest and low vocabulary reading level.
And finally, I like to use six additional reading comprehension workbooks. Each workbook contains short one page stories complete with questions. Skills such as getting the main idea, locating significant details, finding context clues, drawing logical inferences and drawing conclusions are especially stressed.
All in all, the above four different types of reading programs are well suited for upgrading basic reading skills. Over the years, have successfully used them in the classroom and now I bring them to your attention via my home tutoring program.
Clifford Morris
July 14, 2002