Sandy, a high school freshman, has received special education services since grade two, when she was diagnosed with a learning disability in reading and written expression. She participates in regular classes, using books on tape. She currently reads at a fifth grade level with slow fluency.

Sandy is typical of middle and secondary special education students, who often lag behind their peers in reading in middle and high school. These students exhibit slow fluency rates and low comprehension for grade level text.

What Should We Teach?
While it is sometimes considered "taboo" in middle and high schools to teach direct reading instruction, we need to remediate reading difficulties for these students. At the same time, these activities need to be incorporated into a student's schedule in a realistic way. Fortunately, all the skills necessary for automatic, accurate reading respond well to direct instruction, particularly when phonemic awareness activities are coupled with sound and word structure instruction. This instruction does not have to be at the exclusion of other reading or English classes. Three 45-minute instructional periods per week for direct reading skills would be ample time to considerably improve students’ decoding skills.

Before beginning instruction, you should have an accurate handle on the skills each student has mastered. This can be done by using any number of commercially produced assessment tools or by developing some teacher-made tools to assess the student’s ability to blend phonemes, segment phonemes, and manipulate sounds in words. You should also assess a student's knowledge of the sounds related to letters and letter combinations and the student's ability to read words of various structures, such as closed, open, silent-e.

Individual or small group lessons should reinforce the necessary phonemic awareness skills (blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds) by direct instruction of these skills and using cueing and error correction instruction.

Activities to Reinforce Phonemic Awareness in Adolescents

Rhyming
Though rhyming is less predictive of reading difficulties at this age, you can reinforce this skill by using poetry and song lyrics. Some students may find it easier to rhyme multisyllable words with similar endings. For example:
creation--celebration
canary--dictionary

Alliteration
Students could analyze books and poems with strong alliteration. They can also express themselves in writing in this manner. Modeling and prompts may be required.

Segmenting
Using links of one-syllable words, have students segment them into phonemes.

ea-t b-ea-d
s-ea-t r-ea-d
m-ea-t r-ea-l
b-ea-t

Using links of multisyllable words, have students segment them into syllables.

Ac-tion Dic-tion
Frac-tion Dec-tion
Fric-tion Sec-tion
Fic-tion

Nonsense words can and should be used.

Blending
Orally dictate multisyllable nonsense words, and have students blend the individual parts of each word. Have them attempt to have visual images of the words before blending.

Word Attack
Provide direct decoding instruction on skills that encourage the reading of multisyllable words. This instruction would include but is not limited to syllable division, learning the rules for adding common endings to words, prefixes, suffixes, and accenting patterns.

Spelling
Have students spell dictated multisyllable words. At first, say each syllable distinctly and have the student repeat it back slowly. Next, say the word in a normal manner and have the student say it fluently.

Use Word Links to Manipulate Sounds within Words
Word links can be sequenced from the most basic phonic generalization (closed syllables) to the most complex (multisyllable words). The progression of words to be decoded should be aligned with the instruction you are implementing in class. Word links from skills that have been mastered can also be used to increase fluency and automaticity.

In most cases, when word links of one syllable are presented only one phoneme has to be substituted as a student progresses through the lists of words. When decoding multisyllable words, a student should be able to recognize that an entire syllable may change.

Links can be organized into 10 word blocks or lists, and more than one block can be developed for each skill level. While the first link(s) for each skill should present real words, subsequent links may contain nonsense words.

Initially, tell your students this may occur. Later, they should be able to recognize this change on their own.

Sample word links at the multisyllable level follow:

pickle prepare
fickle predate
freckle predict
heckle prefer
tickle prevent
trickle present
tackle preside
spackle prescribe
tasteful graceful
tastefully gracefully
disgraceful proved
disgracefully disproved

As your students read through the word links, you may want to keep a record of error patterns, such as using an incorrect vowel sound or omitting a syllable.

Cueing and Error Correction
If a student has difficulty reading a word, do not pronounce it for him or her. Use the following strategies:

Cueing
Ask the student, "What is the vowel ...what is the sound?" "What are the consonants...what are the sounds?"

If there are more difficult parts such as digraphs, prefixes, or suffixes, ask the student to identify them and give the correct phonemes. It may be useful to have students begin with the vowel sound in a word, blend the ending part of the word, and last blend the beginning part. So for ship, the student would say /i/, /ip/, ship.

Error Correction
Letter tiles may encourage students to observe their own errors. For example, if a student reads the word breaking as break, use tiles to spell out the word that was pronounced.

Say "This is the word you said (break). This is the word you were supposed to read (breaking). How are they different? What sound does -ing make? Now read the entire word."

Using these strategies, we can provide instruction in the skills older, poor reading students need within their regular schedule.

top