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OVERVIEW

The majority of students who are referred for acade-mic concerns and/or have been identified as having aspecific learning disability have difficulties in the areaof reading. Among the population of students withlearning disabilities, an estimated 80%have readingdisabilities (Lerner, 1993). Students with poor read-ing skills are becoming more apparent to educatorsand parents due to the results found on criterion-ref-erenced, high stakes mandatory testing that mostschools nationwide have incorporated across gradelevels. The National Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP; 1997) reported that 40% of fourthgraders, 30% of eighth graders, and 25% of twelfthgraders were reading below grade level. The percent-ages are even higher and the gaps even wider betweengrade levels in schools predominately made up of freeor reduced lunch eligible student populations (Snow,Burns, & Griffin, 1998 ). Therefore, it is imperativethat school psychologists work with a team of pro-fessionals to help students with reading problems bydesigning interventions from data-based decision-making activities. While data based decision-makingpractices will be touched upon briefly to establishtheir important link to targeting interventions,another chapter in this volume more fully addressesdiagnostic and assessment issues in the identificationof students with reading problems.

This chapter addresses intervention needs of stu-dents who have been formally diagnosed with readingdisabilities. It also addresses students who may notmeet formal criteria for a learning disability in the area

of reading but who struggle with identifying and com-prehending written language. Moreover, this chapteris congruent with the consultation/problem-solvingorientation toward the practice of school psychologyand discusses data-based intervention planning with-out placing emphasis on formal classification. Prob-lems in reading can affect performance across severalacademic content areas, occupational endeavors, andother functional skills that are used in everyday lifeactivities. The task of the school psychologist is to workwith teachers and parents to define those problemsthrough data-based decision-making methods, to targetinterventions to address the problems, and to helpimplement and evaluate those interventions. Specifi-cally, this chapter will describe briefly the characteris-tics associated with reading problems, delineate aproblem-solving/data-based decision-making processto develop effective interventions, and finally focus ona variety of interventions that can be used to addressdifferent types of reading problems.

BASIC CONSIDERATIONS

Characteristics of Students With Reading Problems

Two types of students with reading problems thatschool psychologists and educators are likely toencounter are students with IQ-reading achievementdiscrepancies and students with a combination of lowability and low reading achievement. Students whohave IQ-reading achievement discrepancies tend tohave average to high average IQ and listening com-

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prehension scores (Aaron & Joshi, 1992). Childrenwith developmental dyslexia are included in thisgroup of poor readers. Dyslexia is often associatedwith some neurological impairment that results inpoor word recognition skills including phonologicalprocessing. Slow rate of reading, erratic oral reading,misuse of function words and suffixes, and readingcomprehension difficulties on timed reading tasks areamong the symptoms commonly associated withdyslexia (Aaron & Joshi, 1992).

Low ability readers make up the largest number ofpoor readers. They tend to have lower than averageIQ and have below grade level listening comprehen-sion, word recognition, and reading comprehensionperformance. Although we tend to classify childrenwith severe reading problems as low ability readers orIQ-achievement discrepant readers, current researchindicates that there are no significant differencesbetween these two groups of readers on how theydevelop reading precursor skills (Wristers, Francis,Foorman, Fletcher, & Swank, 2000). Earlier researchconducted by Stanovich and Siegal (1994) also sug-gested that IQ did not predict reading difficultiesamong low ability (garden variety readers) and IQ-discrepant readers. Instead, they found that phono-logical core variables were better predictors of readingskills. Therefore, differential diagnoses based on IQscores do not yield different growth patterns in read-ing development. For this reason, the remainder ofthis section will describe poor readers according tospecific cognitive processes and behaviors they exhibitrather than according to diagnostic categories.

Poor readers with word recognition difficulties gen-erally over rely on textual cues such as pictures andother words to identify words in a passage that areunknown to them (Kim & Goetz, 1994). Overusingtextual cues to identify unknown words reduces thelikelihood of transforming unknown words into sightwords (Pressley, 1998). Many errors are made whenchildren use semantic contextual approaches ratherthan sounding out words. Children need opportuni-ties to sound out words even if this means they haveto struggle (Adams & Henry, 1997). This may be eas-ier said than done as many children do not know howto begin to sound out words. Some poor readers havelimited letter-level knowledge or an understanding ofthe alphabetic principle. Typically, these types of read-ers are limited to being able to sound out only thebeginning letter of a word.

The inability to sound out words can be attrib-uted to phonological processing difficulties. Weakphonological processing accounts for the largestpopulation of students classified as having dyslexiaor individuals with severe word recognition diffi-culties (Pressley, 1998). Phonological awareness is acrucial component to becoming literate. This hasbeen verified through studies that examined long-term effects of phonological awareness training inpreschool and kindergarten on subsequent readingachievement performance of first, second, and thirdgraders (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1993). Phonemic awareness is knowingthat spoken language is made up of discrete, opera-ble sounds. Rhyme production, sound blending,sound deletion, sound substitution, and sound seg-menting are among the many ways individuals canoperate on spoken words. Developmentally, chil-dren begin with rhyme activities and then progressto segmenting sounds in words. Among phonemicawareness exercises, phonemic segmentation is thebest predictor of word identification for primarygrade children (Nation & Hulme, 1997). An exam-ple of a phonemic segmentation exercise would beto pronounce a word such as “cat” and ask a childto say each sound as three separable sounds in theword such as /c/ /a/ /t/.

Some children develop phonemic awarenessthrough literacy experiences at home before enteringschool while others have limited exposure to printand role models who engage in reading and writing.Some children, regardless of their environmental con-ditions, struggle with grasping phonemic awareness.Thus, children who lack phonological skills and havea limited vocabulary will have difficulty phonologi-cally “recoding” letters back into their constituentsounds when they encounter print (McCormick,1999). When most children initially encounter aprinted word, they go through a process of sequen-tially decoding the word by attempting to make let-ter-sound conversions. Phonological recoding occursas children check to see if the word they madematches a word that has been stored in their memo-ries (Daneman, 1991). At advanced stages of thisprocess, children learn to decode words hierarchi-cally. Hierarchical decoding involves using letters inwords to cue the sounds of other letters. For exam-ple, using the “e” at the end of the word “came” tosay the “a” as a long vowel sound.

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Related to phonological recoding is orthographicprocessing. Orthographic processing refers to recog-nizing and remembering letters which includes notingsequences of letters in words and being able to dis-tinguish among spelling patterns of words. Althoughsmaller in population compared to those with phono-logical deficits, some children with reading andspelling problems have difficulty processing wordsorthographically (Stanovich & West, 1989).

Children need to become automatic at recognizingwords to free up their cognitive energies to gainmeaning from text. Poor readers not only strugglewith recognizing words in text but also have difficultysuppressing irrelevant information in text whichplaces limitations on the use of their short term capac-ity for comprehending printed material (Pressley,1998). These students have particular difficultygrasping an understanding of texts that containwords with multiple meanings (McCormick, 1999).

Beyond the word reading level, poor readers havedifficulty making inferences about the content pre-sented in text. Poor readers do not connect ideas welland may not grasp the conceptual nature of the mate-rial. Problems with making inferences are partly due topoor readers’ lack of prior knowledge about the con-tent. On the other hand, good readers read more andgain more knowledge each time they read material.

Good readers also have a repertoire of compre-hension strategies to help them construct meaningfrom text. Poor readers know very few, if any, strate-gies that aid in the construction of meaning from textand strategies for monitoring understanding of text(Pressley, 1998).

Collaborative Team Model

Regardless of their diagnostic label, poor readers getpoorer without the benefit of effective instruction.This notion is what Stanovich (1986) coined the“Mathew Effects” in reading. In order to prevent theretention of weak literacy skills, appropriate stake-holders such as school psychologists, general educa-tion teachers, special education teachers, speech andlanguage specialists, reading specialists, administra-tors, and parents need to initially establish collectiveefficacy about the relationship between instructionand performance. In fact, an increase in readingachievement occurred in schools where beliefs aboutteaching and learning competencies were shared col-

lectively by stakeholders (Goddard, Hoy, & Wool-folk-Hoy, 2000). Once collective beliefs have beenestablished, collaborative problem solving amonginterested stakeholders should occur within a data-based decision-making framework. In other words,the process of linking assessment to interventionneeds to be shared by the appropriate multidiscipli-nary team members. Team members need to share theresponsibility for determining students’ skill levels,identifying instructional environment variables, tar-geting appropriate interventions, monitoring studentprogress as a function of interventions, and evaluat-ing outcomes. These responsibilities are carried outthough data-based intervention methods.

Data-Based Intervention Methods

Before describing interventions that help studentswith word identification and reading comprehensionskills, it is imperative to discuss the bases for whysome interventions are targeted for implementationover others. Decisions made without systematic datacollection may result in targeting inappropriate inter-ventions that further exacerbate students’ struggleswith reading.

When a student experiences difficulty with read-ing, professionals and other interested stakeholders(i.e., family members) should work in a collaborativefashion by collecting data to define the problem inobservable terms. Data can be gathered through var-ious methods according to the nature and severity ofthe reading problem. For instance, school psycholo-gists may be responsible for conducting systematicobservations of students engaged in oral reading andcomprehension exercises. This is a good way to begingathering data. Following observations, school psy-chologists may conduct interviews with students andteachers to uncover information that was notdetected by observation. Teacher and student inter-views can be helpful in gaining information aboutperceived expectations of competence in literacy andto ascertain efficacious behaviors toward meetinglearning goals. Examples of teacher and student inter-views can be found in Shapiro’s (1996) AcademicSkills Problems Workbook. Systematic observationscoupled with interviews may be sufficient dependingon students’ needs or may further guide team mem-bers in choosing other appropriate reading assess-ments that are sensitive to specific difficulties as well

as provide baseline measures of performance. Typesof reading assessments may include informal readinginventories, curriculum-based measures, miscueanalysis inventories, criterion-referenced tests, andstandardized diagnostic reading achievement tests.

Practitioners are cautioned about the use of testscores derived from these assessments because theymay not be as helpful for targeting interventions incontrast to the strategies students use or fail to usewhile attempting items involving identifying andunderstanding print. This is especially the case forstudents who are older and can identify words accu-rately but not automatically (Snow, Burns, & Griffin,1998) and who may take a long time deriving correctanswers to comprehension questions about text.

Once interventions are targeted and implementedfrom assessment information, treatment integrityneeds to be assessed. This means that interventionsneed to be applied consistently as designed. For acomprehensive discussion about this importantaspect of implementing interventions, please seeTelzrow’s chapter on intervention integrity in this vol-ume. Progress monitoring of student performanceover time is another critical component that needs tooccur to assess whether or not interventions are effec-tive for meeting students’ literacy needs. Curriculum-based measures and other informal measures (e.g.,teacher-made probes and informal reading invento-ries) that indicate specified criterion levels of perfor-mance can serve as appropriate assessments forprogress monitoring of student performance. Schoolpsychologists may support teachers by helping themmonitor student progress over time in a systematicfashion. Students should also be encouraged toengage in progress monitoring activities. Graphicrepresentations of data may provide a visual descrip-tion of whether interventions have been appropri-ately targeted and applied. The following case studyillustrates the use of various assessments that aided intargeting an intervention and conducting systematicprogress monitoring.

Case Study of Rick

Rick was a third-grade youngster with an attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilityin reading and written expression. His special educa-tion teacher consulted with the school psychologistabout intervention suggestions for Rick. The school

psychologist conducted systematic observations ofRick during oral reading and spelling activities.Observations revealed difficulty with making letter-sound correspondences while attempting to identifybasic high frequency words with consonant-vowel-consonant patterns. A teacher and a student inter-view was conducted, and it was determined that Rickwas provided with a buddy to read stories and toassist with classroom assignments. Rick reported thathe would feel anxious about completing readingassignments if he did not have his buddy’s assistance.Without assistance, Rick was asked to read and spella list of 100 words with consonant-vowel-consonantpatterns. It was determined from this assessment thatRick could only read 5 out of the 100 words on thelist. Interestingly, he was able to spell 90% of thewords on the list.

The school psychologist assisted the special edu-cation teacher in developing procedures includingintegrity checks during baseline, intervention, andmaintenance sessions . Baseline word identificationand spelling probes were developed and consisted of10 words that were randomly selected from a list of100 words. The 10-item probe was given over threesessions. It was determined that Rick’s mean identifi-cation score was 5.0, and his mean spelling score was8.6. Word boxes, an intervention described in detailin the intervention section of this chapter, was imple-mented to help Rick make letter-sound correspon-dences while attempting to identify words. Wordidentification and spelling probes were administereddaily at the completion of intervention. They con-tained sets of words with consonant-vowel-conso-nant patterns taken from the list of 100 words. Rickobtained a mean score of 8.6 on word identificationprobes and 9.8 on spelling probes across instructionalsessions. Maintenance probes were also adminis-tered, and Rick maintained a high level of perfor-mance on probes. Figure 1 depicts a graphicrepresentation of Rick’s word identification andspelling performance overtime.

BEST PRACTICES

This section provides a description of evidenced-based instructional interventions for students whohave difficulty with word identification and readingcomprehension. Since many educational profession-als are likely to be aware of some of the traditional

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approaches to literacy instruction that have been usedover many years, many of the approaches presentedin this section will be those that are considered con-temporary approaches for meeting the needs ofdiverse learners. Of course, the interventionsdescribed are not exhaustive of all approaches for theamelioration of reading difficulties. Please consult theresources listed in the annotated bibliography sectionof this chapter for further reading about any of theinterventions presented in this chapter and for adescription of other instructional approaches. Foranyone thinking about implementing any of theseinterventions, it should be realized that “one size doesnot fit all.” It may be desirable to modify or targetother interventions based on sufficient data obtainedabout the unique needs of individual students.

General Components of Effective Instruction

Whether word identification or comprehension inter-ventions are implemented, general psychologicalcomponents of teaching and learning that apply tohow children acquire literacy should be incorporatedin lessons. Scaffolding, shaping, connecting to priorknowledge, constructing meaning, motivating stu-dents, and providing opportunities to learn have beenconsidered among the key components of best liter-acy instructional practices (Gambrell, Morrow, Neu-man, & Pressley, 1999). School psychologists canwork collaboratively with educators by helping themincorporate the following critical components duringinstruction.

SCAFFOLDING

Several instructional approaches to word identifica-tion and reading comprehension employ scaffolding.Scaffolding, a term coined by Wood, Bruner, andRoss (1976), means that necessary support needs tobe given to a child and gradually faded once the childapproximates independent functioning while com-pleting tasks. The concept of scaffolding is rooted inVygotsky’s (1978) notions about how the mind devel-ops through interactions between teachers and stu-dents and how children may be able to achieve morethan what was initially expected given the proper cul-tural tools. Examples of scaffolding include teacherfacilitation and feedback as well as appropriateinstructional materials that serve as supportive struc-tures to make tasks solvable (Carnine, Silbert, &Kame’enui, 1990). Instructors who embrace scaf-folding procedures often are those who view them-selves and the materials they design or select asmediators of learners’ development.

SHAPING

A behavioral concept that is similar to scaffolding isshaping. Shaping, a term described by Skinner (1957),means to elicit reinforcers for successive approxima-tions toward completing an objective. Delivering rein-forcers for efforts made toward achieving a goal canbe considered as ways of providing support to stu-dents. This cannot be stressed enough when workingwith children with reading difficulties. Many childrenwith severe reading problems will become extremelyfrustrated in the process of becoming literate because

Figure 1. Continuous progress monitoring of Rick’s word identification and spelling performance

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they will not experience success immediately. Rein-forcers may not have been a systematic part of stu-dents’ instructional histories. In other words,contingencies for reading behavior may have beeninconsistent or delivered haphazardly rather than insuccessive approximations to desired reading behav-ior. These are the children who grow up and find read-ing not enjoyable and may not experience reading asa reinforcer (e.g., gaining information and pleasure).These individuals may later find themselves in limitedemployment and social situations. Therefore, it is cru-cial that educators and parents shape reading behav-iors through praise and rewards contingent uponefforts made at achieving reading skills.

CONNECTING TO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Effective instruction includes being aware of whatstudents know. Assessing student’s prior understand-ings and experiences will help teachers facilitate linksbetween what students know and what they need tolearn. How quickly one grasps information presentedin text depends largely on one’s prior knowledge ofthe content (Gambrell et. al., 1999). Students withlearning problems often have limited prior knowl-edge and experiences on which to “hook” new infor-mation. It is especially imperative that teachersprovide opportunities for students to gain back-ground knowledge through discussions and activitiesbefore students are presented with text that is foreignto them.

CONSTRUCTING MEANING

While specific literacy skills are important to teach,educators must keep in mind that the purpose of read-ing is to construct meaning from text. Capturing theplot of a story, following instructions for puttingthings together, and learning about current events areamong some of the purposes for reading. Severalscholars claim that children acquire decoding,spelling, grammar, and comprehension skills moreeasily if the context from which they are presented ispersonally meaningful (Gambrell et al., 1999).Higher-order reasoning and new meanings about textcan result from children who were provided withmeaning-based literacy activities at school and home.

MOTIVATING STUDENTS

Motivating students to read is a real challenge par-ticularly for the upper elementary and secondary

school teachers. Studies have shown that kindergart-ners and first graders are more likely to expend effortstoward reading even if they fail (Nicholls, 1990)while older students, especially those with learningdifficulties, are less willing to put forth effort if theydo not experience success (Jacobson, Lowery, &Ducette, 1986). Young children are more likely toattribute their failures to insufficient effort whileolder students who struggle with reading oftenattribute their failures to factors such as task diffi-culty and unfounded teacher perceptions (e.g., stu-dent feels teacher does not like him or thinks he isincapable).

Attribution retraining (i.e., helping students real-ize their efforts lead to desired outcomes) coupledwith strategy instruction has been found to be effec-tive for helping low achieving students improve ontheir use of reading strategies (Carr & Borkowski,1989). Literacy activities should be authentic, inte-grated with other content areas, interesting, andoccur within a social context so that students aremotivated to participate in them (Pressely, 1998).This includes providing students with opportunitiesto choose from a range of high quality literature andto exchange dialogue about reading material (Palmer,Codling, & Gambrell, 1994).

PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN

Within the time allotted for literacy activities, stu-dents need opportunities to make frequent responsesduring oral and silent reading as well as writinglessons. Students also need plenty of opportunities topractice new skills that are learned. This instructionalcomponent cannot be emphasized enough while stu-dents are acquiring literacy skills. Children withlearning disabilities and mental retardation needmore opportunities to practice than their peers(McCormick, 1999). Over-learning leads to transfer-ring skills to other tasks more easily.

Word Level Interventions

Many students who experience difficulty identifyingwords are not aware that spoken words are made upof discrete sound units (Adams, 1990). Phonemicawareness exercises also help children operate onsounds of spoken language through phonemic blend-ing, segmentation, deletion, and substitution activi-ties. Phonemic blending exercises involve blending

individual sounds or clusters of sounds together toform a whole word such as blending the sounds /c-a-t/ to form the word /cat/ and blending /fl-at/ to formthe word /flat/. Segmentation exercise involves sayingeach individual sound in a word such as saying /t-a-p/ for the word /tap/. An example of a phonemic dele-tion would be removing the /f/ from the word /fin/ andsaying the remaining sounds /in/, and substitutionconsists of adding a different sound (/b/ ) to theremaining sounds to make a new word (/bin/). Phone-mic analysis exercises can involve identifying theposition of sounds in words such as identifying the /a/as the middle sound in the word /tap/.

The purpose of implementing interventions thattarget word level problems is to help children even-tually read words by sight or with automaticity.Some children have difficulty reading words auto-matically because they do not possess strategies inmaking letter-sound associations. Word level inter-ventions consist of phonics instructionalapproaches. Phonics incorporates methods by whichchildren learn letter-sound associations. Stahl,Duffy-Hester, and Stahl (1998) stated that goodphonics instruction consists of developing the alpha-betic principle, developing phonemic awareness,providing familiarity with forming letters, and pro-viding sufficient practice in reading words. They alsoindicated that good phonics instruction should notbe rule-based and does not dominate literacy instruc-tion programs. Many of the rule-based approachesused workbook exercises that required children tomemorize and recall rules. Clymer’s (1996) review ofcommonly used words in children’s reading materi-als revealed that rules were rarely applicable to mostwords encountered in texts.

PHONIC APPROACHES

There are a variety of approaches to teaching phon-ics. Rule-based approaches are considered to be ana-lytic approaches to teaching phonics (Cunningham,1999). Children are taught some words and asked toanalyze them by breaking the words down into theircomponent parts followed by making phonic gener-alizations about the words. As alluded to previously,many basal reading programs that include accompa-nied workbooks are reflective of an analytic approachto teaching phonics (Stahl, Duffy-Hester, & Stahl,1998). For example, students may read a list of wordson a worksheet and mark whether the vowel in each

word makes a “long” or a “short” sound. Syntheticapproaches to teaching phonics, on the other hand,involve explicit teaching of letter-sound associations.During practice lessons, students pronounce soundsin isolation and then blend them to make words(McCormick, 1999). An example of an empiricallysupported synthetic phonics program is DirectInstruction (Adams & Englemann, 1996). Thisapproach infuses behavior analysis principles ofteaching children to systematically progress from onephonic skill to the next. Initially, individual soundsare taught and then children are asked to blendsounds to form words. Cueing, feedback, and oppor-tunities to make many responses are provided duringevery lesson.

Drawing from decades of her own research, Cun-ningham (1995) advocated teaching phonics throughprimarily an anologic approach. In an anologicapproach, children are taught to become word pat-tern detectors and use words or parts of words theyknow to figure out unknown words. For instance, ifa child can read and spell the word “sit” then the stu-dent will also be able to read and spell the words“fit,” “kit,” “bit,” “hit” and other words that belongto this family of words. Cunningham’s Four Blocksprogram follows predominately an anologicapproach to teaching phonics (Cunningham, 1999).The Four Blocks program is a combination of fourmajor reading approaches that emphasize multilevelinstruction. This program includes guided reading,self-selected reading, writing, and word studyapproaches. The word study approaches best illus-trate the kinds of activities that would representteaching phonics anologically. Doing the word wall,making words, and guessing the covered word areamong some of the activities included in the wordstudy portion of the program.

Doing the word wall consists of putting words uparound the classroom where children can easily seethem. Displayed words should be carefully selectedand correspond to those that children commonlyneed in their writing. Only approximately five newwords need to be added to the wall per week. Wordsthat typically cause confusion can be written in a vari-ety of colors so they stand out among those writtenin black. Children are asked to write and say thewords on the word wall and complete a variety ofreview activities so words are read and spelled auto-matically.

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Making Words activity consists of providing stu-dents with six to eight different letters on letter cards.The teacher says words with two, three, four, and moreletters that can be formed with the letter cards. Chil-dren are then asked to use all of their letters to make abig word that is related to something they are reading.For instance, the teacher may give the students cardswith a letter printed on each. The letters may be, s, a,p, l, r, e, t. The students are instructed to use the lettersto form two-letter words and then three-letter wordsand so forth . At the completion of the lesson, the stu-dents are asked to use all of the letters and make a bigword such as “stapler” (see Cunningham & Hall,1994, for a thorough discussion of this activity).

Guessing the covered word consists of writing fourto six sentences on the board and covering up oneword in each sentence with a sticky note. The firstsentence is read, and the students guess the coveredword as the teacher writes down all the guesses. Theteacher explains to the children that the covered wordcould be lots of different words when the letters arenot shown. All of the letters are uncovered up to thefirst vowel. Guesses that do not begin with the begin-ning letters are erased, and the students are encour-aged to continue guessing with the remaining wordswritten on the board or make new guesses. Eventu-ally, the whole word is uncovered as students’ guessesapproximate or match the covered word.

In the Four Blocks program, children are taught torely on word study strategies to identify unknownwords while reading texts (Cunningham, 1999). Thewords blocks activities can also be considered waysin which children study about words. In fact, thesetypes and other similar approaches have been classi-fied as word study phonic approaches and consideredto be contemporary because they employ multisen-sory methods of helping children understand phono-logical and orthographic features of words (Stahl,Duffy-Hester, & Stahl, 1998). Other types of con-temporary word study approaches include word sortsand word boxes.

Word sorts are an anologic phonic approach forhelping children categorize words according to sharedphonological, spelling, and meaning components.They can come in the form of closed sorts where theteacher establishes the categories or open sorts inwhich children induce the categories based on anexamination of subsets of given words (Zutell, 1998).Words to be sorted are usually placed on index cards,

and the established categories provide a structure fordetecting common spelling patterns and discriminat-ing among word elements (Barnes, 1989). Bear, Inv-ernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston (1996) provide acomprehensive guide to creating various types ofword sort lessons and other word study phonic activ-ities. For instance, phonemic awareness sorts can beaccomplished by having the children place tokensbelow given respective word categories as the teacherarticulates words. Children can also spell wordsbelow respective categories as the teacher orally pre-sents words. Howard Street (Morris, Shaw, & Perney,1990) and Early Steps (Santa & Hoien, 1999), twoeffective tutoring programs for low achievers, incor-porate word sort techniques rather extensively.

Word boxes, a synthetic phonic approach, helps chil-dren segment sounds of spoken language. Thisapproach has been effective for helping children withlearning disabilities identify and spell words (Joseph,1998/1999). Typically, word boxes have been usedwithin the comprehensive Reading Recovery program(Clay, 1993). A word box consists of a drawn rectan-gle that has been divided into sections (boxes) accord-ing to individual phonemes in a word. Initially, childrenplace tokens in respective sections as each sound in aword is articulated slowly (see Figure 2). Eventually,children place letters (either magnetic or tile) in respec-tive sections as each sound in a word is articulated. Dur-ing advanced phases, children are asked to write lettersin the respective divided sections of the box.

Joseph (2000) compared beginning first-gradechildren who were either assigned word boxeslessons, word sorts lessons, or traditional phonicslessons and found both word boxes and word sortsto be effective on children’s phonemic segmentation,phonemic blending, word identification, nonsenseword naming, and spelling in contrast to the tradi-tional group’s performance. There were no significantdifferences between the word boxes group and theword sort group. Controlled comparative research isstill very young, and until more data are obtained, itis best practice to be flexible and choose from a vari-ety of empirically based phonic approaches that facil-itate the study of phonological and orthographiccomponents of words.

SIGHT WORD RECOGNITION

A reciprocal relationship exists between developingsight word recognition and word identification skills

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for reading new words. Once students are able to reada bank of words fluently, they can easily identify newwords by analogy especially if letter sequences con-tained in words are similar. And, once children breaksound to letter codes, they are able to read wordsmore easily by sight or automatically especially ifchildren engage in repeated readings of words(Samuels, 1988). Repeated exposures to words inmultiple contexts are also important for storingwords in memory and recalling them easily (Pressley,1998).

Higher-Order Interventions

Higher order interventions include reading compre-hension and concept attainment activities. Learningstrategies instruction approaches were found to beeffective for helping children with learning problemsattain concepts and improve on their reading com-prehension performance (Pressley & Woloshyn,1995). Learning strategies instruction approachesthat consist of self-questioning, constructing mentalrepresentations to integrate information from text,

and identifying text consistencies were among themost effective comprehension strategies (Haller,Child, & Walberg, 1988). Examples of theseapproaches include semantic mapping, PQ4R (Pre-view, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review),and reciprocal teaching.

Semantic mapping typically involves developingword webs that reflect students’ understanding ofconcepts and constructing a diagram connectingevents of a story or connecting facts taken from con-tent area textbooks (Novak & Musonda, 1991). Stu-dents who struggle with grasping conceptualrelationships may find diagrams to be helpful visualaids. Semantic maps can be either process-oriented orproduct-oriented (McCormick, 1999). Process-ori-ented maps usually are completed before studentsread assigned material to help them establish somebackground knowledge. This type of mappingrequires teacher facilitation of student responses. Forexample, a teacher may write a concept (e.g., satire)in a drawn box and ask the class to give examples ofwhen they experience it. As the class responds, theteacher writes their comments below the concept.

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Figure 2. Phonemic segmentation phase of word boxes instruction. The word, “rose,” has three sounds and,therefore, three connected boxes along with the same number of tokens are presented.

The teacher may then ask the class how it feels whenthey witness the concept and write their responses,drawing connecting lines to the other comments, andso forth. Product-oriented maps, on the other hand,are produced by students as an outcome activity afterthey have read material. Students generally workindependently or with other peers and construct amap connecting ideas presented in text. An illustra-tion of a semantic map summarizing some aspects ofNorth Carolina’s beaches can be seen in Figure 3.

The PQ4R method of comprehending readingmaterial is an extension of SQ3R (Survey, Question,Read, Recite, and Review) (Thomas & Robinson,1972). This method involves previewing the readingmaterial, questioning the reading, reading to answerthe questions, reflecting upon the reading, reciting thereading, and reviewing the material. Previewing thematerial means surveying the chapter titles, main top-ics, and subheadings of the text. Students can turn theheadings and subheadings into questions. Questionsthat were developed can be answered by reading thetext. Reflections about the content can occur as thematerial is being read if the students pause to formconnections and create images. Reciting is retellingwhat was read from memory. This form of retellinghelps students monitor the information they areobtaining from the reading. If some information isnot being retained, then students may need to readsections of the text again. Last, review the material byanswering questions and referring back to the text forclarification of mistaken responses to questions. Thismethod appears to be most appropriate for older stu-

dents because it encompasses the application ofhigher-level metacognitive processes. AlthoughPQ4R is not a new method, it continues to be con-sidered as an effective technique for helping studentsorganize and retain information from texts (Ander-son, 1995).

Reciprocal teaching is a reading comprehensionapproach that has helped delayed readers catch upand even exceed typically developing readers (Palin-scar & Brown, 1984). This approach places heavyemphasis on teacher-student interactions in a rathercognitive apprenticeship fashion. After students andteacher read from common text, they confer witheach other about the reading material. Initially, theteacher leads the discussion by modeling strategies ofpredicting, question generating, summarizing, andclarifying text. The students are then asked to lead thediscussions and apply the strategies that were demon-strated by the teacher. Guided practice is provideduntil students can use the strategies effectively. Thegoal of these reciprocal teaching interactions is toconstruct meaning from texts.

SUMMARY

The most frequent type of referral concerning stu-dents with academic problems is in the area of read-ing. Students with reading problems presentcharacteristics that lend themselves to variousinstructional challenges. Some challenges of inter-vention design for the amelioration of reading prob-lems lie at the word level, others lie at higher order

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North Carolina Beaches

climbing

rocks on beaches

Cape HatteresLight house

surfing

rough waters

Jockey's Ridge

Nags Head

walking

shells on beaches

Cape LookoutLight house

fishing

calm waters

Fort Macon

Emerald Isle

Figure 3. Semantic map of North Carolina’s beaches

reading skills, and some lie with both. The best wayto target appropriate interventions for children withreading problems is to conduct assessments that leadto appropriate data-based decision-making and prob-lem-solving activities. Assessments that provideinformation directly linked to intervention designshould be used with children who have been referredfor having reading difficulties.

School psychologists play a vital role in meetingthe needs of students with reading problems. Byworking collaboratively with teachers, parents, andother interested stakeholders to develop effectiveinstructional interventions, school psychologists canbe seen as part of the solution rather than the prob-lem. In order for reading interventions to be effective,fundamental components of teaching and learningsuch as scaffolding, shaping, connecting to priorknowledge, motivating, and providing opportunitiesto practice skills should be implemented. Whetherstudents are learning word level skills or higher orderskills, mediations such as teacher facilitation andfeedback are crucial to helping struggling readersbecome fluent. Teacher mediation and other cognitivetools can be seen through, for example, word studyphonics, semantic mapping, and reciprocal teachingapproaches.

In the past, school psychologists have often playeda strong role in the diagnosis of children with read-ing problems. As our nation progresses into thetwenty-first century where accountability of instruc-tional and learning outcomes are at the forefront ofobjectives in most school systems, school psycholo-gists need to move toward a proactive role of design-ing instructional interventions from data-baseddecision-making practices.

It is now time for best practices in school psychol-ogy to become the rule rather than the exception.

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aaron, P. G., & Joshi, R. M. (1992). Reading problems:Consultation and remediation. New York: Guilford.This is one of the first books especially tailored to schoolpsychologists consulting with teachers about studentswith reading problems. Aaron and Joshi describe psy-

chological processes that contribute to reading acquisi-tion. This book provides a thorough discussion about dif-ferent types of reading difficulties including a veryinformative discussion about dyslexia. Interventionstrategies for working with children who have wordrecognition, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension dif-ficulties are presented. An additional feature of this bookis the practical guidelines for selecting basal series, read-ing tests, and tips for parents of children with dyslexia.

Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F.(1996). Words their way: Word study for phonics,vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice-Hall.This hands-on practical guide to designing word studylessons for helping children improve their phonologicalprocessing, vocabulary, and spelling is extremely user-friendly. More than 300 word study activities are pre-sented in a mini-lesson format so professionals whodirectly work with students can readily reproduce andimplement them in the classroom. Word study activitiesare included for all ages including preschool populations.

Gambrell, L. B., Morrow, L. M., Neuman, S. B., & Press-ley, M. (1999). Best practices in literacy instruction. NewYork: Guilford.This edited book contains chapters from many of theprominent scholars in the field of reading. An overarch-ing theme of this book is the idea that literacy instruc-tion should occur within an ecologically balancedcurriculum. Instruction is described as a powerful tooland the teacher plays an important role as mediator inthe development of children’s literacy skills. Compre-hension, writing, phonics, and the use of technology inliteracy programs are emphasized in the various chap-ters. Links between home and school environments per-taining to the literacy needs of students are addressed.

McCormick, S. (1999). Instructing students who have lit-eracy problems (3rd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.This is a very comprehensive book dealing with manyaspects of students with reading difficulties. Types ofreading programs are reviewed and etiology of readingproblems is addressed. However, this book more com-prehensively provides a wealth of information about var-ious types of assessments (formal and informal) for theidentification of reading problems including identifyingstudents’ strengths and weaknesses. The other large sec-

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tion of the book deals with instructional interventionsthat can be readily applied by practitioners. Case studiesare included throughout the book that illustrate theauthenticity of the content. One of the best features ofthis book is the description of instructional approachesfor students with extreme needs such as nonreaders.

Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: Thecase for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford. This book provides a discussion about the whole lan-guage versus phonics debate and the need for compre-

hensive balanced literacy instruction. Pressley providesseveral chapters on the development of literacy thatspans from infancy to the upper elementary grades. Healso provides a chapter on the problems that childrenexperience while learning to read. This includes some ofthe probable causes and symptoms of literacy failure.Pressley makes links between the process involved inbecoming literate with attributional and motivationaltheories of learning. He concludes with some reflectionsabout where the reading field has been and where it needsto be from an instructional perspective.

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