The post 3 Ways Adaptive Learning Supports Foundational Math and Reading for Elementary Students appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>Every student deserves to feel seen, supported, and capable of success, but in today’s classrooms, that’s easier said than done. With wide-ranging skill levels across math and reading curriculum, learning gaps, and growing demands on teacher time, it’s hard to give every learner what they need, when they need it. That’s where interactive learning platforms with adaptive technology can play a vital role.
Learning is cumulative, and small skill gaps can become major roadblocks if left unaddressed. Adaptive programs can identify missed concepts early, sometimes before a teacher even sees them, and automatically provide targeted practice or revisit foundational concepts.
The How: Continuously Detect, Assess, and Target
Adaptive learning programs work behind the scenes to detect when a student is struggling. The programs don’t wait for formal, summative assessment to intervene. Instead, programs like DreamBox Math and DreamBox Reading use continuous formative assessments to analyze patterns like repeated errors, hesitation, and inefficient strategies. The programs then respond instantly to offer support the moment a student needs it, without disrupting a student’s learning momentum. At the same time, these programs capture student progress and provide data-rich reports that offer educators actionable insights, enabling them to differentiate instruction, target small-group work, and make informed decisions that deepen student learning.
Catching learning gaps early keeps students on track and prevents them from falling behind. This proactive, just-in-time support is especially effective in addressing unfinished learning and avoiding costly remediation.
Adaptive learning platforms don’t just deliver digital content. They respond in real time to how each student learns, creating personalized virtual learning experiences that boost confidence, fill knowledge gaps, and help every student grow, at their own pace, and in their own way.
The How: Track, Analyze, Adjust in Real Time
Adaptive programs track more than just right or wrong answers, they continuously analyze how students solve problelms, how long they take, and where they hesitate. Based on this data, programs like DreamBox Math and DreamBox Reading adjust instruction in real time, tailoring the content, pacing, and scaffolding in real time.
Adaptive learning solutions help create the Zone of Proximal Development, the space where learning is most effective because it’s just beyond what a student can do independently, but still within reach.
A growth mindset is essential for learning. Adaptive learning technology reinforces this by helping students connect effort with progress. As they receive feedback and independently overcome challenges, they gain confidence that their abilities can grow with practice.
The How: Encourage Exploration, Productive Struggle, and Independence
DreamBox Math and Reading lessons are designed to support agency and progress through independent exploration and productive struggle. This type of adaptive technology offers hints and scaffolds only when necessary, allowing students to learn and grow by trying things, making mistakes, and seeing what works. As students successfully solve problems on their own, they build confidence and become more willing to take on new challenges.
Students who believe they can figure things out are more likely to stay engaged, take academic risks, and develop lifelong learning habits.In this space of productive struggle, students stay motivated and make progress, challenged by content that’s appropriately difficult, not too easy, and not overwhelming.
Adaptivity isn’t just about technology. It’s about creating responsive, student-centered classrooms. By choosing adaptive learning tools like DreamBox Math and Reading, educators can support every learner, close skill gaps, and build the confidence students need to succeed, now and in the future.
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]]>The post Back-to-School Breakthroughs with DreamBox Reading appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>Back-to-school season is a chance to reset, refocus, and reinvest in what works best for students. And this year, there’s a powerful new enhancement to DreamBox Reading aimed at helping every student become a confident, capable reader.
This back-to-school year, DreamBox Reading, a personalized literacy program that dynamically adapts to every student’s needs within and between lessons, is expanding its support all the way through fifth grade. DreamBox Reading’s enhanced capabilities are focused squarely on helping educators accelerate foundational reading skills through engaging, personalized instruction rooted in the Science of Reading.
We don’t need more statistics to know that too many students struggle with reading and that strong foundational skills are critical for academic and lifelong success. But we do need better resources to address shortfalls—especially as the demands on classroom time keep growing, learning gaps persist, and the needs of students become more varied.
That’s where DreamBox Reading steps in. The new enhancements for Back-to-School 2025 are built specifically to meet this moment: filling gaps, engaging learners who’ve started to fall behind, and saving educators time.
Expanded Coverage for Elementary Schools
DreamBox Reading now supports students from PreK through grade 5, with new lessons specifically for upper elementary learners. These lessons focus on foundational skills like phonological awareness, phonics, decoding, guided reading, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency and spelling—skills that many students in grades 3-5 still need help mastering. With ready-to-learn, developmentally appropriate lessons all in one platform, DreamBox Reading gives teachers an additional way to support students without adding more to their plates.
A New, Engaging Experience Built for Older Learners
Students in grades 3-5 need a different learning experience than those in younger grades. DreamBox Reading introduces a redesigned interface tailored to this age group, striking a balance between playfulness and purpose. The new environment motivates students to participate without feeling like the program is “too young” for them.
By designing the experience to align to their needs, interests, and age, students are more likely to stick with it. That sustained engagement leads to more practice, deeper skill development, and a stronger connection to reading—exactly what educators need to see, especially for learners working to catch up.
Smarter, More Personalized Instruction
The heart of DreamBox Reading is its intelligent adaptivity, built upon the same award-winning technology as DreamBox Math. DreamBox Reading continuously adapts to student input—not just right or wrong answers, but how they interact with the lessons. The curriculum personalizes instruction in real time, offering timely scaffolds, feedback, and supports when students need them most. Whether a student is breezing through vocabulary practice or struggling to decode new words, the program responds with the right level of guidance.
This means educators don’t have to spend hours creating differentiated plans for each student—DreamBox Reading does it in real-time, continuously adapting to where the student is and what they’re ready for next. Teachers get a clear picture of student progress, including insights they can use for whole-class instruction, small groups, or one-on-one support. And for students, the result is instruction that feels intuitive, manageable, and empowering.
Educators have never been clearer about what they need: tools that are grounded in research, easy to implement, and built to truly support student learning. DreamBox Reading’s back-to-school updates check all these boxes—and then some. Whether you’re trying to close learning gaps, fortify literacy skills, or simply reach every student more effectively, this is one upgrade that’s worth exploring.
As you prepare for a new school year, know that you’re not alone in tackling the challenges of literacy. With the right resources, the path to proficiency can be a little smoother—for both students and teachers.
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]]>The post 11 Key Takeaways from a Conversation with a State Superintendent appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>During our recent webinar, The Mississippi Miracle: Key Strategies for Improving Reading Achievement, Dr. Carey M. Wright, former State Superintendent of Education in Mississippi, shared her insights and experiences leading efforts to significantly improve reading outcomes across the state.
Just before Dr. Wright came to Mississippi, the state legislature passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), which placed an emphasis on students meeting grade-level benchmarks by third grade. Dr. Wright was tasked with overseeing this legislation. Over the course of her tenure as state superintendent, Mississippi went from having some of the nation’s lowest reading scores to being spotlighted as the state with the highest reading gains according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Here are some highlights from this engaging and inspiring discussion with Dr. Wright.
One of the guiding principles of Dr. Wright’s work was ensuring effective and proven resources were in place. She shared, “Children’s lives are too valuable to use things that don’t work.” Dr. Wright described that one of her first actions as state superintendent was to create a team of experts in effective reading instruction who relied on scientific research to oversee these efforts. The team recognized the need to implement the research-proven Science of Reading approach across the state to transform reading outcomes.
When asked about the approach to eliminating practices or resources that are not research-based, Dr. Wright explained that she and her team regularly posed the question, “Are you demonstrating positive student outcomes? If the answer to that is yes, and there is a research base to support that, then that’s something you need to look at. If the answer is no or the results are mixed, you need to look for something else.”
At one point during the conversation, the engaged audience asked, what would you have done differently? Dr. Wright remarked, “I sure wouldn’t have gone slower… My sense of urgency has never wavered, and that is what I tried to lead with.” Dr. Wright emphasized that, “You’ve got to go in every single day like it’s the only day you’ve got because the little ones are depending on you as the professionals that are standing in front of them and parents are depending on you…When the day is over, you can’t go back and grab that day.” Each day matters and Wright shared that she and her team focused energy on creating systems to ensure that every student was getting what they needed to maximize the impact of instructional time and move their literacy growth forward.
All leaders know that teachers are an instrumental piece to transforming reading outcomes. And Dr. Wright emphasized that point, “Teachers and leaders come in every day wanting to do the best that they can” but many did not have the background on research-based practices to effectively teach reading to all students. Because of this, professional learning was at the core of her team’s plan. She explained the approach to teacher and administrator training “was not a finger-pointing exercise” about what had not been done in the past. Instead, her team framed the strategy around how they could best build teacher capacity.
Mississippi teachers needed to be educated about the Science of Reading so they could understand the why and the how. This includes the five major components of learning to read and how to teach them in concert with one another, rather than independently. This approach worked and the improvement in outcomes followed. Dr. Wright shared, “We are proof positive. We’ve trained all of these teachers and trained all of these administrators. People are feeling so much more confident about their teaching ability.” Beyond the initial professional development, Dr. Wright’s team continuously asked administrators and educators how else they could support them to refine their approach and support educators.
Dr. Wright shared that beyond simply teaching educators about the Science of Reading, it was necessary to equip them with an understanding and guidance on how to evaluate practices and materials to ensure alignment and success. She explained, “We wanted them to have not only the grounding of that work, but [to also understand] here’s what you can do with it.” To that end, Dr. Wright’s team created rubrics to evaluate instructional materials, resources, and curated lists of vetted high-quality curricula. She described that, as a leader in the state, “We were there to be in service to our districts, our teachers, our leaders, and our families. We asked, what do you need? and began creating what they needed to do their job even better.”
During the conversation, Dr. Wright acknowledged that this effort to improve reading outcomes requires hard work, time, and buy-in from a cross-section of stakeholders. She explained that sharing data to show tangible measures that these efforts were yielding significant, positive results was crucial in building momentum and a continued investment in these literacy efforts. She noted that “proving that what we were doing was working–that speaks volumes.” The data “solidified a belief system” in the overall initiative. She also reflected that having this data be public and widely celebrated has made long-term state investment in literacy success much more likely: “The state has seen such great gains; I think they might be hesitant to not want to fund something that has been so successful.”
During the Q&A session of this event, an audience member asked about ways to support students who were reading below grade level. Dr. Wright responded, “Intervening early is critical. You’ve got to be able to meet individual needs. That’s the critical part–using your data to identify the kids that need the extra help.” Dr. Wright spoke of the heightened importance of intervention for students who are not meeting grade-level benchmarks by third grade–regardless of whether they are retained or promoted. She shared, “Children that are retained don’t need another year of the same thing. They need a more solid, intensive reading intervention and a solid 90-minutes of instruction and intervention.” And, children who are promoted to fourth grade, but not reading at grade level, also need additional instruction and support. To that end, Wright and her team provided supports for teachers of struggling third and fourth grade readers that included specialized professional development on how to provide the instruction and intervention that these students need.
“Parents are critical in this whole endeavor,” Dr. Wright pointed out. She described that it is important to “invite parents in in a meaningful way…more than at a back-to-school night or parent conference night. It’s involving them as volunteers, it’s working with small groups, it’s having them serve on your leadership team. I think it’s important that they see themselves as a value add.” Wright and her team created information to engage parents including family success guides in multiple languages, an informational website, and resources to support schools engaging with families around literacy. She also noted that families can be great advocates for reaching out to decision-makers such as legislators–who listen to their constituents in prioritizing decisions and initiatives.
As a true believer in the power of high-quality early learning opportunities, Dr. Wright explained, “Early childhood…is so critical, especially in states like Mississippi, which has the highest poverty rate in the nation, with spots that have very little access to high-quality learning.” With funding from the state’s Early Learning Collaborative Act, Dr. Wright was able to expand access to early learning in areas of the state that had the lowest scores on statewide assessments and had the fewest opportunities for high-quality early education. And by simply adding a question to kindergarten registration throughout the state, Dr. Wright and her team were able to see that those students attending the state collaborative programs were significantly outperforming their counterparts on literacy outcomes. With this success, she continued to find ways to “keep expanding those programs because we knew how well they were functioning” and was able to make the case to the state legislature to provide additional funds.
Dr. Wright credited support from the state legislature and the LBPA legislation with sparking the state-wide focus on literacy growth and creating the context that allowed for this remarkable progress. Throughout her time as state superintendent, she continued to partner with state legislators to generate funding and public support for the initiative. She shared that “Establishing relationships with legislators and elected officials to really believe that the department could lead this work went a long way in us being able to garner additional funds for what we were trying to do.”
There are hundreds of ed tech solutions in the market right now, but few organizations can demonstrate their products are research-driven and have data to prove they are moving the needle on student learning. Dr. Wright urged leaders to look to organizations committed to showing real data, not simply anecdotal results. When an organization leads with research, she shared, “It’s a telling piece that the leader that runs the organization has children in her heart and the power of what they are trying to get done with their product speaks volumes.”
In reflecting on the lessons learned throughout this literacy transformation in Mississippi, Dr. Wright noted that all decisions, strategies, and plans should come back to the singular question of “Are children learning?” She emphasized that this central tenet “is the key–and you’ve got to keep that first and foremost in your mind at all times.” Wright went on to explain that if the answer to this question is no, educators must ask “Why not? And what else can we be doing that we’re not doing? If they’re not learning, how are we, as adults, changing what we’re doing to ensure that children are learning?” This unrelenting commitment to improving reading outcomes is inspiring educators and legislators around the country to implement an evidence-based and research-proven approach to accelerate reading growth for their students.
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]]>The post Science Matters: Literacy Research is the Key to Improving Reading Outcomes appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>Educators have asked themselves this question countless times. They have tried different strategies, software products, and professional development as potential answers. But with only 35% of U.S. fourth-grade students proficient in reading, where does reading instruction go from here?
Numerous terms, including the science of reading and the 5 components of reading, are at the forefront of discussions in the literacy field right now, yet both terms have appeared often in reading research for decades. What is behind the renewed interest?
In 2019, Mississippi was the only state where students showed gains in reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). A key differentiator for why Mississippi, a state where students have historically struggled in reading, showed reading gains is the investment the state has made in its teachers, providing intensive professional development in literacy practices that are firmly based on the science of reading.
The phrase science of reading refers to the large body of research connected to understanding how we learn to read. The science of reading points to those evidence-based approaches and methods that result in successful outcomes for students. For example, there is a renewed interest in the National Reading Panel’s research-based concepts that should be at the core of any reading instruction program. The five concepts are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In addition, greater scrutiny has been given to the importance of teaching foundational reading skills with explicit, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, a strategy that is clearly aligned with reading research.
The success in Mississippi has not gone unnoticed. Other states are beginning to support and pass legislation that focuses on evidence-based reading instruction aligned with the science of reading and proven to improve reading. Likewise, many literacy program providers are now promoting their offerings under the “science of reading” umbrella. The education world is buzzing constantly about yet another shift in reading instruction, even though for many educators, there is still much to digest and understand, especially how this shift could impact their current literacy instruction.
The National Reading Panel (NRP) convened in 1998 at the request of Congress to help determine how best to teach children how to read. Two years later, the NRP issued its report titled, “Teaching Children to Read,” which divided reading instruction into five components—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. The report summarized the research available at the time for each component and made recommendations for instruction for each.
Additionally, the NRP reports that about 5% of students will learn to read with minimal instruction. These learners become readers no matter what kind of reading instruction is provided. Sixty percent of students will learn to read with significant support, and the remaining 35% will require intensive intervention to learn how to read. So, while some students may need only minimal instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness, research shows that most students need substantial instruction in phonics-based skills to gain fluency, strengthen comprehension, and grow vocabulary.
As 47 states have shifted to literacy practices firmly based on the science of reading, there are simple strategies that can be put into practice immediately to gently pivot toward what the research has shown to be effective instruction for improving students’ reading outcomes.
Below you will find a brief description of the three components that the Reading Plus program, for students in grades 3-12, addresses as well as some suggested strategies that can be easily incorporated into your current reading instruction to support improved reading outcomes.
Comprehension means making meaning from text, but how to get to comprehension can be more complex and requires three processing systems: phonological (recognize familiar words or be able to decode unfamiliar words; meaning (understand the meaning of each word), and context (understand the meaning of sentences and entire texts).
One simple strategy to support your students’ reading comprehension is to incorporate read alouds into your instruction, using turn and talk, open-ended questions, discussion protocols in small groups, and student-student discourse to ensure 100% student engagement.
Another strategy, or resource, to support the development of comprehension skills is an online literacy program like Reading Plus that offers personalized scaffolding to build independent reading skills. The Reading Plus program automatically customizes lesson features including content level (based on an initial assessment), reading rate, opportunities to reread texts, and questions interspersed throughout each lesson. The program also allows students to self-select reading texts that are engaging and further build content knowledge and vocabulary.
A 2019 research study found that young children whose parents read them five books a day enter kindergarten having heard about 1.4 million more words than kids who were never read to. For those children who were not read to, vocabulary acquisition is essential to improving reading comprehension and raising reading achievement.
Read alouds, a great strategy for improving reading comprehension, can also help build students’ vocabulary. In addition to vocabulary acquisition that can be formally taught before and during a read aloud, a combination of turn and talks, small group discussions, and student-student discourse can further grow students’ vocabulary.
Additionally, an adaptive reading program with built-in vocabulary support can supplement whole and small group instruction, providing a personalized path to vocabulary development and improvised reading comprehension. For example, the vocabulary component in Reading Plus teaches students a research-based compilation of highly valuable, cross-curriculum, general academic vocabulary. Students master words through activities such as matching a vocabulary word with its synonym, selecting sentences where it is used properly, and completing sentences with members of its word family.
Definitions of oral reading fluency, the focus of grades K-2, often include speed, accuracy, and expression. Silent reading fluency, which becomes increasingly important beginning in grade 3, is the ability to read silently with sustained attention and concentration, ease and comfort, at grade-appropriate reading rates and with good understanding.
A few key ideas about fluency, in relation to literacy instruction:
The debate around best literacy practices will continue, possibly shifting toward instruction firmly based in the science of reading or remaining firmly planted in balanced literacy–or somewhere in between. While this debate happens, the above strategies are suggestions for your daily reading instruction that can boost students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency, with the goal of improving reading outcomes for all students.
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]]>The post Most Tested, Least Taught: Silent Reading Fluency appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>Before we define silent reading fluency, it may be helpful to understand that before students can approach silent reading fluency, they begin their reading journey with oral reading.
Oral reading is generally the focus of grades K – 2. Students build foundational skills, such as phonemic awareness and phonics skills. During this exciting time, they learn to decode words, put sentences together and make it through their first books. This is often referred to as the learn-to-read phase.
During this phase, it’s easy for teachers to track their students’ speed, accuracy and expression as they read aloud. It’s immediately apparent when a student doesn’t read a word or sentence correctly, and a teacher can intervene appropriately and quickly.
Around grade 3, there’s a dramatic shift in the reading journey. Around this time, the expectation is that students will be ready to use reading to learn grade-level content. This is the reading-to-learn phase. Students will continue to hone and sharpen these skills as they move through school and will read and understand increasingly complex texts. This ongoing phase will continue throughout each student’s academic career and beyond. This work is mostly executed through silent reading.
Silent reading fluency is the ability to comfortably read silently with concentration, at appropriate reading rates and with clear understanding. This skill bridges the gap between word recognition and comprehension. Silent reading is a combination of three types of skills that actively work in concert as a student reads. It is:
Students cannot achieve fluency without the ability to recognize and understand words immediately and decode unfamiliar words. Strong fluency is created by automaticity, language comprehension and a solid vocabulary. It allows for improved text comprehension and empowers readers to build their vocabularies, which enables greater comprehension of more complex texts.
When fluent readers read silently, they:
Students must continually master all these skills while engaged with reading to become proficient silent readers. However, unlike oral reading fluency, effective silent reading fluency is difficult for teachers to monitor and intervene if students need support. Silent reading fluency is an unseen and unheard skill, and it is undeniably necessary to become a proficient reader.
Students use silent reading daily – when students take quizzes and benchmark tests, complete assignments, study for an upcoming discussion or simply follow directions in class. They also use the skill during high-stakes exams, such as end-of-year assessments, standardized tests and entrance exams, like the ACTs or SATs. Students use silent reading skills every day, across all areas, and as a result nonproficient reading affects the ability to learn in ALL subject areas.
Data has indicated that silent reading fluency is a common struggle for many students. Seventy percent of nonproficient students are not fluent in silent reading, and 30% of proficient students are not fluent in silent reading.
Teachers are trained to listen to students for struggles during oral reading. However, students who struggle to read silently may not demonstrate easy-to-spot signs.
Early readers have a small visual span; that is to say, they only see a few letters at a time. They also haven’t developed eye movements that naturally move from left to right, knowing where to land on words. When researchers looked at eye-movement recordings of students reading, they noticed that students who read inefficiently make many extra fixations or eye stops. They move very short distances and make regressive eye movements. They’ll move backward to check words or confirm what they saw. The reader invests a lot of time trying to move their eyes to the right place within the text. Reading becomes exhausting and making sense of the content becomes difficult.
Consider this example of a nonfluent 7th grade student:
A nonfluent 7th grade student reads at a pace of about 140 words per minute, at a 2nd-grade level. As this reader attempts to read a 7th grade text, they regress back across the text and the reader must reorder the words before trying to comprehend the content. This extra work leads to low comprehension levels and low motivation.
All of this extra energy is largely invisible to teachers. Without insight into these inefficiencies, teachers may not intervene, and students will continue to struggle in classes for years.
Becoming a fluent reader allows a student to focus more deeply on comprehension, read increasingly complex texts and become a more confident and engaged reader. Educators can leverage technology to guide and support this work and provide each student with what they need the moment they need it.
Fluency is a gateway to comprehension and motivation. When the eyes can take in text at a comfortable, adequate rate, energy is freed up for comprehension. When students understand material, they feel confident and motivated to continue to read.
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]]>The post 6 Summer Reading and Math Activities for Elementary Students appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean students have to stop learning. Everywhere you look there are opportunities for them to expand their math and reading skills. Discovery Education is here to help teachers support students’ learning this summer. Here are six fun math and reading activities that families can enjoy together while students improve their reading and math abilities.
Develop number sense with card games. Counting, estimating, adding, subtracting, multiplying and working with fractions and money are important skills. The more students use numbers, the better they understand number relationships. The simple game of “War” helps them recognize numbers that are greater than or less than others, or each player can take two cards from the pile and add (or subtract or multiply) their two numbers. The bigger number (or smaller number in subtraction) wins that round. Students practice computation skills, while improving their mental math strategies.
Have fun with make-believe! Writing stories is great for practicing reading, writing and art skills – all things students would normally do in school. Give them blank pieces of paper or a journal. Have students create their own stories or recreate one of their classic favorites. Maybe have them write down everything they do in one day to turn it into a story the next day – complete with illustrations.
Try out two-dimensional fun: Many students love to draw. Why not incorporate shapes and geometric vocabulary? Ask them to make an ice cream cone using two shapes. Talk about the attributes of the shape. How many sides does the triangle have? How many angles? Which lines are parallel?
Take thinking to the next level with three-dimensional building: Using building sets, let learners explore and create. Ask them to build a structure for a certain purpose or that meets certain criteria (it needs to have a way for people to enter and exit, or it must have a place for the horses to sleep). After they build it, they’ll love describing to you how it functions to meet its given purpose.
Research and plan vacation dreams together. Have students imagine what they’d do on the perfect vacation. Help them research their vacation destination, writing down how long they’d stay, what they’d do and how they’d do it. For instance, a visit to a water park or National Park. Visit the site online and learn as much as possible about the rules, times, activities, cost per day and what to wear. Create a list of necessary items and turn it into a writing and reading adventure, complete with a story line.
Work through problems together. Involve your learner in real-life problem-solving: think out loud and explain your reasoning. When planting a garden, how many seed packets will we need? Calculate how many seeds we’ll need per row at six inches apart. What tool should we measure with or should we estimate? The more kids hear your reasoning, the more comfortable they will become using math!
Cultivate lifelong learning. Most libraries have summer programs to keep students learning while they’re not in school. Visit your library to learn about summer programs for kids. Libraries read aloud for younger children and have book clubs and discussion groups for older children and teens. Each summer reading program is a little different, so check with your local library and see what it has to offer.
You can help students have math and reading fun all summer long with engaging games, activities, and projects!
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]]>The post 8 Research-Based Instructional Recommendations for Students with Signs of Dyslexia appeared first on Discovery Education.
]]>One in five students has a language-based learning disability, the most common of which is dyslexia. Of students with reading difficulties, up to 80 percent are likely to have some form of dyslexia. Unfortunately, many of these children go undiagnosed until well after the primary grades, leading to significant difficulty with reading and subject-area studies.
Fortunately, awareness of dyslexia is rapidly growing. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education issued a new policy affirming that students with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia are specifically eligible for school support funded through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
At the time of this publication, more than 40 states now have dyslexia laws, and an increasing number of school districts are increasing diagnostic and instructional services for students with signs of dyslexia. While state mandates are not always fully funded, the fact is that there is strong research supporting specific evidence-based instructional practices that enable dyslexic students to become successful readers and strong academic achievers.
Multisensory learning is a method of learning that includes more than one sense, such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. Because multisensory learning activates multiple parts of the brain, it’s been shown to increase engagement and enhance memory in all learners—but especially those with dyslexic characteristics.
International Dyslexia Association (IDA) recommends incorporating two or three of the senses into reading instruction to help dyslexic children better understand new information and make the lesson stick.
Explicit instruction, as defined by the IDA, is “the deliberate teaching of all concepts with continuous student-teacher interaction. It is not assumed that students will naturally deduce these concepts on their own.”
This student-teacher interaction is critical because very few students have the motivation or confidence to teach themselves, especially if they’re already struggling with dyslexic characteristics.
When a student has achieved adequate reading fluency, that means that they’re able to read text quickly, smoothly, and accurately. When they’re reading aloud, they can place the proper expression and intonation on the words, and they can comprehend what they’re reading without pausing to decode each individual word.
Poor reading fluency is a very common characteristic of dyslexia and other reading disabilities; problems with reading fluency can linger even when students’ accuracy in word decoding has been improved through effective phonics intervention.
However, when students switch from oral reading practice to silent reading practice, you can no longer hear these pauses or mispronunciations, so it’s much more difficult to discern whether or not a student is struggling with fluency.
To help dyslexic students develop fluency, the IDA recommends that teachers:
Knowledge of word meanings is critical to comprehension. When we read, we recognize words and word families we know. That’s why vocabulary acquisition is an essential element of reading growth.
In fact, cognitive scientists have suggested that vocabulary is one of the greatest predictors of reading comprehension.
As the IDA states, “research supports both explicit, systematic teaching of word meanings and indirect methods of instruction such as those involving inferring meanings of words from sentence context or from word parts.”
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that still holds meaning. Morphology, then, is the study of base words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
When educators incorporate morphology into reading instruction for students with dyslexic characteristics, they help them more quickly and easily decipher unfamiliar words in a text.
For example, when a student understands that the word expectation means “a belief about the future,” then they can also easily infer the meanings of expected, expectancy, and unexpected.
Diagnostic teaching is an instructional approach that aims to pinpoint exactly why a particular student is struggling and then provide individualized instruction to meet that student’s needs.
The IDA recommends that educators take both informal (for example, by observing the student in explicit instruction) and formal assessments (for example, by assigning standardized tests) of their students’ needs.
According to the IDA, effective reading instruction for students with signs of dyslexia is both:
Rather than allowing students to fall back into less difficult texts or frustrate themselves by moving ahead too quickly, you should structure the lessons in a way that enables students to strengthen their existing skills while developing new ones.
Syntax and semantics deal with the grammatical, mechanical, and sensible structure of language. They are the set of rules and principles that allow us to both convey and decipher meaning in a text.
The IDA recommends that educators include instruction in both syntax and semantics to help students with signs of dyslexia understand the mechanics of language, the relationship between words, and the contextual meaning of texts.
Incorporating all eight IDA recommendations into the ELA curriculum can be difficult. Fortunately, research has shown that Reading Plus is effective in meeting the needs of students with various reading needs, including those with signs of dyslexia.
The program is designed to help students establish efficient reading habits that enable them to spend their mental resources on interpreting and appreciating what they read, rather than battling with the mechanics of reading. Key components of the program specifically meet the IDA recommendations.
Additionally, the program helps educators use data to diagnose individual student needs and drive effective literacy instruction for all learners.
Supporting all students in their learning journeys calls for reliable strategies, content, and curriculum. When it comes to learning disabilities like dyslexia, identifying the “right” strategies can make all the difference.
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