Using Context as an Assist in Word Solving: The Contributions of 25 Years of Research on the Interactive Strategies Approach.

Recently, there has been growing concern about how to most effectively support the literacy development of beginning and struggling readers with regard to helping them learn to effortlessly identify the huge number of words that proficient readers ultimately learn to read with automaticity. Some, noting the critical importance of phonics instruction in learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, take the position that students should attend only to alphabetic information in word-solving attempts. However, long-standing theories of the development of word-reading skills support the value of teaching students to use both alphabetic and contextual information in word solving in interactive and confirmatory ways. The authors summarize 25 years of research in which beginning and struggling readers were taught to use both code- and meaning/context-based strategies for word solving and were provided with explicit, responsive instruction focused on the alphabetic code. The authors present brief summaries of theoretical explanations of the word-learning process. Then, the authors summarize six experimental studies that, together, included students in kindergarten through fourth grade and involved the implementation of the Interactive Strategies Approach in the primary grades and an extension of the approach with middle elementary students with reading difficulties. The studies resulted in substantially improved reading outcomes among treatment versus business-as-usual groups. The authors contend that using both phonics- and context-based information facilitates the ability to build sight vocabulary, which in turn enables readers to turn their attention to the most important goal of literacy learning: meaning construction.

Response to intervention as a vehicle for distinguishing between children with and without reading disabilities: Evidence for the role of kindergarten and first-grade interventions.

Children at risk for early reading difficulties were identified on entry into kindergarten, and half of these children received small-group intervention two to three times a week during their kindergarten year. The other half received whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools. These children were again assessed at the beginning of first grade, and those who continued to have difficulties in reading received either one-to-one daily tutoring offered by project teachers from the beginning to the end of first grade or whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools over the same time period. All target children were periodically assessed through the end of third grade. Results suggest that either kindergarten intervention alone or kindergarten intervention combined with first-grade intervention are both useful vehicles for preventing early and long-term reading difficulties in most at-risk children.

Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?

We summarize some of the most important findings from research evaluating the hypothesized causes of specific reading disability ('dyslexia') over the past four decades. After outlining components of reading ability, we discuss manifest causes of reading difficulties, in terms of deficiencies in component reading skills that might lead to such difficulties. The evidence suggests that inadequate facility in word identification due, in most cases, to more basic deficits in alphabetic coding is the basic cause of difficulties in learning to read. We next discuss hypothesized deficiencies in reading-related cognitive abilities as underlying causes of deficiencies in component reading skills. The evidence in these areas suggests that, in most cases, phonological skills deficiencies associated with phonological coding deficits are the probable causes of the disorder rather than visual, semantic, or syntactic deficits, although reading difficulties in some children may be associated with general language deficits. Hypothesized deficits in general learning abilities (e.g., attention, association learning, cross-modal transfer etc.) and low-level sensory deficits have weak validity as causal factors in specific reading disability. These inferences are, by and large, supported by research evaluating the biological foundations of dyslexia. Finally, evidence is presented in support of the idea that many poor readers are impaired because of inadequate instruction or other experiential factors. This does not mean that biological factors are not relevant, because the brain and environment interact to produce the neural networks that support reading acquisition. We conclude with a discussion of the clinical implications of the research findings, focusing on the need for enhanced instruction.