“I just did a major research study here in Massachusetts that verified this - that in general, most kids with disabilities do better in inclusive settings, particularly if they get the supports that they need, significantly better.

So the move towards integration or inclusion or mainstreaming - clearly has some support in the data."

- Thomas Hehir, former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and current professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education

This quote is from a recent NPR interview about mainstreaming special needs students. Here is the complete interview:

As pointed out by Thomas Hehir, mainstreaming is beneficial for special needs students. Of course, like any practice, it is only beneficial if it is done effectively. Thus, here is what Thomas Hehir’s research has found to be the best practices for inclusion classrooms:

1. Use resources to help improve the instruction of all students.

“In the book that I just finished on inclusive schools, there are several things that emerge from these schools that I think other schools can do. Number one, they look at their resources as in a sense all being devoted to improving the instructional program for all kids. They don't look at the special ed budget or the bilingual budget. There is a budget for the schools, and the schools use those resources effectively.” – Thomas Lehir

2. Value students with disabilities, value the inclusion of children with disabilities.

“Secondly, the principals of those schools and the teachers of those schools value disability, [and] value the inclusion of children with disabilities.” – Thomas Hehir

It is difficult for any initiative to be effective if the participants are not on board. Mainstreaming special needs students is not going to be beneficial if the principals and teachers don’t value special needs students – this will only create a negative environment for these students.

3. Train teachers to deal with the special needs population.

Here are some parts of the interview touching on the training that most teachers receive to work with the special needs population:

CLAUDIO SANCHEZ (NPR’s education correspondent): Most teachers are poorly trained to deal with this population, if they're trained at all, and special ed teachers are very hard to find. They're in short supply.

Now, it's important to mention here that the range of disabilities or learning disabilities, physical - is enormous. And we're talking about kids with ADHD, autism, developmental, emotional, behavioral disorders, dyslexia, deaf and blind kids. I mean, it covers everything.

MARY (caller): I just want to say I'm a first year teacher at one of the largest public high schools in San Antonio, and during my first year, I somehow managed to receive all of the special education students in the ninth grade because they thought it would be a good idea to stack them.

Out of 175 students, I have 70 special education students, and they range in disability. But some of them have been coming from middle schools where they have back units, which are behavior units, and essentially they're put in a room with seven other students, and they're sort of left to do their, you know, screaming or their - whatever their behavior issue is categorized as.

And then all of a sudden, in high school they get thrown into a classroom with 30 other students, and they're expected to behave, so...

JENNIFER LUDDEN (host): How's it going?

MARY: It's been - it has been a very steep learning curve. I mean, like I said, it's still my - it's my first year. So in addition to all the normal first-year-teacher learning, I also have an incredible amount of special needs students, and...

LUDDEN: And were - did you, Mary, did you get any training for the special needs kids specifically?

MARY: No, I did not. I just had to be certified, which meant I had to take a test.

LUDDEN: Oh, OK. So what would you have liked to have seen done differently there?

MARY: Well, I know for a fact that I needed more training. I did not know - I mean, I've learned a lot this year, but walking in day one, I didn't know how to deal with a student who was going to stand up in class and cuss at me for 10 minutes straight. I didn't know how to deal with a student who was really struggling with basic literacy and how to reach them.

I didn't know how to deal with a lot of the situations I've seen. And I have a huge amount of emotionally disturbed students, and I needed more training. I needed so much more training, and I feel like I've really in some ways failed these students this year.

Teaching is such an interesting profession. Teachers are put into classrooms where they inevitably have to deal with issues that would challenge even experienced psychiatrists and other behavioral specialists. It’s amazing what teachers are expected to deal with. Of course not every teacher can get extensive training, but some would be nice.

Teachers need to know how to deal with the behavioral and emotional challenges they are faced with every day in their classrooms. Whether that training comes from the parents of the children in their classrooms, school counselors, school psychologists, or outside consultants – they need to know what to do in difficult situations.

4. Have teachers work together to solve problems created by inclusion.

“So even if she had the best training, I would also want to see her having more support as it related to kids who had challenges in her classrooms. Again, one of the things that's of - the schools that I've done research in that are highly effective, teachers don't teach alone in these schools. They have other teachers that they work with, that they can problem-solve with, that they can figure out what to do with these kids.” – Thomas Hehir

Two heads are always better than one. Setting up collaboration between teachers can allow them to solve problems they have never faced. Teacher collaboration also allows teachers to share what has worked for them in similar situations.

5. Assign special needs students to experienced teachers.

“In most places there isn't, and I would also say in Mary's case that I think we're very fortunate to have someone with her attitudes going into the education profession. But it is - this is not a good practice that she described of assigning a lot of kids with disabilities to a brand new teacher.” – Thomas Hehir

Since teachers rarely receive formal training for working with special needs students, undoubtedly, it is a better to assign these students to experienced teachers that have dealt with the issues that these students can bring to the classroom. Brand new teachers should not be assigned more than a few special needs students as they are being acclimated to the profession.

6. Do not segregate students in prior grades.

“And also her description of these kids being segregated up until they went into high school is also very problematic. How are these going to learn the behaviors they need to have in school but I would also say in life if they're placed in a segregated classroom with only kids like them?” – Thomas Hehir

If special needs students are going to attend mainstream classrooms, they need to do so at every grade level. You cannot expect them to suddenly adjust because they are in a higher grade.

~

It is important to note, that not only do these best practices and the mainstreaming of special needs students benefit the special needs students, it benefits every student:

“But one of the things that we found in this study was that - and this is from the teacher interviews, and this is very deeply felt by the teachers. When they have figured out how to effectively educate kids who have various types of academic and behavioral challenges in typical classrooms, they feel that their classrooms are better for all kids.” – Thomas Hehir

I strongly agree. As I read the interview my mind was flooded with memories and experiences I had throughout my education with special needs students. In the moment I may have been frustrated that class didn’t move as quickly as I would have preferred because of questions or disruptions from special needs students, but I am so grateful to have learned patience and tolerance for those students.

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to see their gifts as well. To see their humor, to see the simple things that made them happy, to see their intelligence, their innocence - those are memories I’ll never forget. The strength of those memories makes me realize how much I truly did learn from them. Lessons that were far more valuable than any fact or skill I learned in school.    

“If we are always reading aloud something that is more difficult than children can read themselves then when they come to that book later, or books like that, they will be able to read them – which is why even a fifth grade teacher, even a tenth grade teacher, should still be reading to children aloud. There is always something that is too intractable for kids to read on their own.” – Mem Fox

In a recent Reading Horizons webinar, Author Sarah Collinge, discussed the importance of reading aloud to students of all reading levels and the impact this simple practice can have on increasing students’ reading levels. Regardless of how many times I learn that little things can make a difference, the impact of many simple practices never ceases to amaze me.

As the above quote points out: reading aloud is beneficial for students of all ages. During the webinar, Sarah discussed how this simple classroom practice builds students reading levels by exposing students to texts above their current reading level, creating collaboration, and modeling fluent reading.

Exposure to Challenging Texts

As stated in the Common Core State Standards:

Children’s listening comprehension outpaces reading comprehension until the middle school years (CCSS, Appendix A, p. 27)

Because students have a higher level of listening comprehension than reading comprehension, reading aloud to students at a level slightly above their current level exposes them to texts that challenge their current reading ability. AND, because they have an adult guiding their conversations and answering questions, they can comprehend texts they would not comprehend on their own. 

Creating Collaboration

Sarah pointedly explained that classroom discussion is essential for making a classroom read aloud effective. If the teacher is not guiding discussion and providing the vocabulary and context necessary for students to understand texts that are above their independent reading level, reading aloud to students will not build their reading level.

Children benefit from structured conversations with an adult in response to written texts. (CCSS, Appendix A, p. 27)

To build collaboration surrounding classroom reading alouds, Sarah realized that students needed a guide to create the type of discussions that would benefit her students and help them better comprehend difficult texts. When she left them to themselves to discuss the text, she found they naturally pointed out obvious points. So, she thought about what type of discussions she wanted her students to have about the texts they were reading. She decided she wanted students to recognize when they had a thought or idea that was evoked by something they read, and then for them to be able to provide textual support for that idea. To help facilitate this type of discussion amongst her students she used an activity called “Turn and Talk.”

Turn and Talk required that after a passage was read aloud, she would say “Turn and Talk” and the students would discuss the passage that had just been read using the following discussion “stem:”

First student: “When the book said ________ I was thinking ________ because ________.

Partner: “I agree with you because ___________.” OR “I disagree with you because __________.”

After applying this strategy Sarah was amazed by the increased engagement level of her students with the text. She felt that using these discussion stems helped students think critically about the text and match the level of rigor required by the Common Core State Standards.

More “stems” are presented in Sarah’s book: “Raising the Standards through Chapter Books: The C.I.A Approach” >

Modeling Fluent Reading

Having a teacher read aloud to students helps increase their reading level, because it models fluent reading for students. By following along and seeing how the teacher emphasizes different words, pauses at commas and periods, and pronounces difficult words, students can increase their own reading fluency.

To learn more tips for increasing student comprehension, view Sarah’s entire presentation: “Motivating Readers: Collaboration, Challenge, Competence, and Choice” >

Lately I’ve been talking a lot with my little sister – a junior in high school – about her preparation for entering college.  Just listening to the classes she is taking next year (lots of Advanced Placement and Concurrent Enrollment) and what goals she has for her senior year (scholarship and college applications), I realized that even more than when I was walking the halls of our hometown’s high school, kids are feeling the pressure to become “college ready.” 

I remember being in high school and worrying so much about my future life.  I was afraid that one bad grade would ruin me for good, and so I pushed myself very hard and achieved a lot.  I often felt overstressed, tired, and hopeless.  

Now, having actually experienced the rigors of college, I have had plenty of time to reflect on what I could have done to be more prepared for college while in high school.  My school counselor and teachers saw me as “college ready,” but I definitely was not – I never learned how to have fun, and by the time I realized this, my last opportunities to be a kid had passed me by.  I was running in a race for my future, realizing that I had used up all of my energy in what was supposed to be the warm up.    

More and more, it seems like college and other pressures are infringing upon the development of high school students.  People often don’t consider reasons why this may be a bad thing; it is easy to see the increased opportunities to earn college credit in advanced courses and to apply for scholarships and awards as a way to push kids to get ahead.  But what is not being recognized is the fact that these students are still kids and that all of these opportunities are adding a lot of stress on to their already-full plates. 

I once heard adolescence described as putting an inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a jet-engine powered vehicle and telling them to go.  Teenagers may be physically maturing, but they still have so much biological, social, and cognitive development to experience.  They are still learning how to handle themselves out there on the road of life.  They are not ready for all of the demands and expectations of an adult who has had the chance to develop. 

I don’t want to give the wrong impression here – I do think that opportunities to get ahead in high school are great, but everything in moderation.  Speaking from personal experience, I feel the problem is that a lot of schools and counselors are not being responsible about the way they guide high school students through the pressures of high school and college.  Students who are academically gifted might become overstressed by taking on too much and students who are slower to develop might become discouraged if they feel they are not achieving enough.  Meeting deadlines on time is an important habit to develop and teenagers do need exposure to real-life expectations, but they also need help planning and balancing their lives.  Check out this short video which explores why "stress doens't always mean success:"

Counselors should be encouraging students to challenge themselves, but they also need to let students know that it is equally as important to maintain harmony in their lives, including getting time for social interaction and good old-fashioned fun.  Without developing outlets, teens will harbor stress and experience burn out.

Summer provides the perfect opportunity for teenagers to challenge themselves and grow while maintaining an equilibrium with fun.  Here are a few ideas for teenagers to occupy their summer time with: 

Volunteer.  Almost nothing helps a person feel as good and as inspired as community service.  Colleges and employers appreciate knowing that a person is well-rounded and cares about making the world better.  There are so many local opportunities available and since it is a matter of volunteering time, teens can make their own schedules and decide how much time they can and want to give.

Intern.  Getting exposure to a potential career through internships is a great way for teens – and even college students – to get a foot in the door as far as employment goes.  Much like volunteering, internship schedules are usually more flexible, so teens should still have time to enjoy their summers. 

Develop a Talent.  A teen pushing himself/herself to learn something new will provide a sense of challenge and accomplishment.  This can be especially beneficial as an outlet for stress if it involves something they are passionate about, like playing the guitar. 

Set Goals.  The trick here is for a person to stretch themselves, but not overexert.  Set realistic goals, like finishing a book series over the summer or applying for two scholarships.  Setting goals is a good way to stay proactive and motivated about what you want to accomplish. 

HAVE FUN!  I feel like this point cannot be emphasized enough.  Encourage teens to engage in activities that delight them, allow them to relax, and keep their spirits high and hopeful for the future.  Tell them it’s important to do what makes them happy while they can still enjoy being a kid.  I wish someone had told me that it was important to have fun when I was pushing my way towards college.  What a difference it could have made.    

If you know a teen who is struggling with reading, you could refer the teen and their parents to getting 3-month access to Reading Horizons v5 program At Home for the summer.  It is a great program that can help any struggling reader make strides towards better fluency. 

Let’s compare a classroom to a ship.  There are about 20 passengers (the students) and usually only 1 captain (the teacher).  The ship is small and modestly equipped, often requiring the captain to be creative with problem solving in order to keep the ship afloat.  It sets sail in late August and arrives at its destination early next June with only a few short stops to provide breaks from the sea. 

As the teacher and captain of the classroom, it is your job to make sure that over the course of this journey you are steering your students (or your passengers) through experiences that will help them master the right level of skills and techniques they need to survive their life of learning…their life on a sea of knowledge.  The problem that many teachers face is that their students often forget some important skills they learned throughout the school year during the summer break.  As this research states, math and reading are two of the subjects where skill-loss is greatest, along with spelling.  Children from low socioeconomic status families are impacted the greatest, often suffering 1-3 months of learning loss. 

“For disadvantaged students, reading scores were disproportionately affected and the achievement gap between rich and poor widened.”  -- Professor Harris Cooper, Duke University Professor

So what is the secret to skill retention during the summer slump?  It’s no secret – what counts in the long run is what teachers have done throughout the year to help students learn.  Using reading as an example, the best way to enable students is to teach with systematic, explicit instruction in order to allow them to further their own comprehension.  Teach children how to relate the text they read to the world, to other books, and – most importantly – to themselves.

In order to keep kids learning over the summer months, the most effective thing teachers can do is to get parents on board with their child’s learning.  Here are a few suggestions for teachers to pass on to parents to increase summer reading, using The ABCs of Improved Reading:

Access to books.  It is important to give children access to a wide variety of books.  Make a family trip to the local library and have everyone sign up for library cards.  Kids will love the sense of importance and responsibility signing up for a card will give them as well.

Books that match readers’ ability levels and interest.  Let them choose to read about topics that interest them. As their skills grow, make sure the books children read continue to challenge (not frustrate) them.

 **To test whether a book is above a child’s reading ability, use the five-finger rule.  Have a child read 100 words from a book of their choosing.  Ask them to raise a finger for every word they don’t know.  If they raise five fingers, the book is probably too hard.  In this case, help them find a book on the same topic that is on their level.** 

Comprehension, as monitored and guided by an adult.  This concept cannot be stressed enough:  read with your children!  Encourage them to ask questions.  Ask them questions about the characters and storylines to make sure they understand what is going on.  Summarize chapters for them or ask them to summarize.  Reread harder passages. 

Here is a free one hour webinar about helping students not only be motivated to read, but skills that you can teach them to have more success in understanding what they read (which will in turn motivate them to read more):

"Motivating Readers: Collaboration, Challenge, Competence, and Choice" by Sarah Collinge

I’m intrigued by passion. It’s one of those weird emotions that people can never seem to decide is good or bad. There are valid arguments for both, but I tend to think it’s good (bad if taken too far). So, when a passionate conversation started over a link to our recent Orton Gillingham webinar in a LinkedIn Group, I couldn’t help but pay attention.

As I watched the discussion progress I noticed several strong comments coming from one person: Bob Rose. And even though passion can be taken too far, I couldn’t help but wonder what was fueling his strong opinion that writing practice was the ultimate reading solution for every child. So, I contacted Bob Rose, and asked him to write a guest post explaining what he has learned about the importance of writing in regards to teaching children how to read.

The following explains his teaching experiences and research. After reading his post I had a few questions and the answers to those questions are also posted here.

Guest Post by Bob Rose

I'm a retired internist from Long Island, now living in Georgia. I've always had a strong interest in education, and in the 15 years since I retired I've been studying how kids can learn to read in the early grades. Decades ago I decided that “dyslexia” couldn't possibly be an inborn biological condition.

After a few years talking to interested folks (especially on this amazing internet), I joined a listserv for teachers to test my idea that Montessori had been right, and that fluent writing of the alphabet would lead to spontaneous literacy. My favorite quotation was from Hillyer (ca 1923) who wrote, “If you teach a child to write, you needn't bother teaching him to read."

My experience on a listserv of Whole Language first-grade teachers was wildly positive, so the next year (2003) I began my own yahoogroups list and five kindergarten teachers helped me prove what I had learned: kids who can write the alphabet at a minimum of 40 letters per minute (more that the first thirteen letters in 20 seconds) can name 40 randomly presented letters per minute and virtually all of them can read with comprehension.

More than a dozen education-related journals were interested in publishing a description of our controlled study, and I had little luck sending the text on the internet (my email address is rovarose@aol.com).

Finally, I published articles in the newsletter of my med school (an associate dean was a friend of mine), on EducationNews.org, and in a journal called Pen World. In the meantime, my listserv remained active, and we repeated the study with several other groups of teachers, always with positive results. (So far, we’ve never seen a failure.)

The teachers in our study (the WL kids, about 100, were control subjects. The kindergarten teachers in my subsequent study contributed about another 100 “experimental” kids) found that with five minutes of writing practice each school day, the medial kindergartner became “writing fluent” in about three months. Contrary to what the WL teachers feared, the children were delighted to take weekly timed tests, and to gradually watch their writing fluency improve.

Questions

Have you used this with students that have been diagnosed with dyslexia? What were the results?

On my yahoogroups listserv, many teachers have reported the results on hundreds of students without a single failure. I believe that in such a large group, many would have been "dyslexic" (as my then seven-year-old son supposedly was) and that therefore, this method should result in no future "dyslexics" at all.
 
Why do you think dyslexia cannot be an inborn biological condition?

I never heard the term "dyslexia" until the early 1970's, when I was already practicing medicine. Because the condition was becoming popular, the hospital where I worked hired three experts (from Harvard, Rockefeller University and the School District of Baltimore) to come lecture us in a symposium that was supposed to get us up to speed.

The first lecturer stated, "There is no way to diagnose dyslexia except to observe that a student hasn't learned to read when his teacher thinks her should have. Secondly, some kids with dyslexia suddenly "see the light" and go on to read normally. But before that happens, there is no way to predict which kids that will be. And thirdly, there is no known treatment for dyslexia except to use the same methods used forever with normal kids.  (A subsequent lecturer from Stony Brook University demonstrated his own favorite method: a pack of filing cards with some simple written word families.)

So I thought to myself, "If I claimed to discover a new disease without a way to diagnose, prognosticate or to treat it, no one would believe in any such disease".

This idea simmered for a long time. I knew my own son wasn't "dyslexic". He turned out to be a very literate, intelligent and successful adult. After I retired I began to ponder the problem in terms of observation, neurological and computer science and logic. Then I developed the idea of writing and brain imaging.  Soon after I stumbled onto Maria Montessori's 1912 writings. Then I started a free listserv and tried the idea out.
 
From your research what do you think causes children to be slow writers? Simply a lack of practice?

Exactly! None of the K-1 teachers in our studies had ever been told to time for fluency. When they did, all were astounded by the results. We found that kids can identify randomly presented alphabet letters at the beginning of first-grade (or end of kindergarten) about as quickly as they can write the alphabet to auto-dictation. The medial American kid enters first-grade writing 30 LPM. That rate (of RAN/letters) will insure a large percentage of reading problems. Our K teachers found that with five minutes practice per school day (and occasional LPM tests) the median kid can become "writing-fluent" (and literate) in three months.

Does that 5-minute daily writing practice alone lead them to being able to read? What other instruction do they need? If they only used that 5-minute daily writing practice and no other reading instruction, would they still learn to read? My guess would be no… so what else do they need?

Yes, becoming writing fluent (>40 LPM) DOES seem to work by itself in K-1.  My youngest two grandchildren, once writing fluent, taught themselves to read during the first weeks of kindergarten. What they did was go up to their bedrooms and take a kiddie book they knew by heart (from being read to them so many times).  If a story started, "Once upon a time...", he or she looked at this text and said to themself: "Hmmm....that seems to make sense!"  Descending from the bedroom, they were readers, and then only had to learn about a thousand new words to read about every word in their oral vocabulary.
 
How does this work with older students and adult learners? What are the results for them?

I don't really know.  Everyone knows it's easier to prevent a reading problem than it is to cure one.

However, my experience is encouraging.  I once tutored a 17-year-old severe dyslexic and had him reading well after only two sessions.  He said he "got it" after he had written, over and over, a short list of simple word families (like cat, fat, rat).

One of the WL teachers in my control group, a first-grade teacher in Indianapolis (Ruby Clayton), had a student in her class who failed to become writing-fluent or literate during the year.  She offered to tutor the girl after school during the early weeks when she was in second-grade.  A few years later she was surprised to learn that girl had one of the highest reading scores in her class.

I tutored another very severe dyslexic who was in second-grade.  Actually, I quickly learned he could indeed read (his parents were distracted by his older sister's illness).  He told me he had "clicked" after his second session with a Sylvan Learning tutor who had told him, "Just think of what each written word MEANS".

I explained that was impossible, and asked, "Is it possible that her advice just made you stop trying to "sound out" and give your computer-brain a few seconds to recognize each written word?"

"That's possible," he answered.

You refer to whole language a lot in your article… is this approach considered to be part of the whole language approach? How does this approach relate/ fit into the whole language approach? Is it in support of it or against it?

I am actually very much against the concepts of "whole language."  In my opinion, this is just a rehash of the ideas of Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, namely: children are either born with the ability to read or they aren't....there's nothing else a teacher can do about it.
 
So I don’t agree with Ken Goodman.  However, he once wrote two things I agree with. One was "kids learn the alphabetic principle through writing" (WL/Montessori and WRTR folks seem to agree). The other was, "If there is ever a breakthrough in reading instruction technology, it will be made by classroom teachers and not by education professors."  He also said: "There is no magic bullet" and "One size doesn't fit all."
 
These are wrong. The magic bullet is writing practice, and this was known for ages until the first decades of the twentieth century.  It indeed teaches them "words as a whole."  Additionally, it teaches word recognition and identification, spelling, fluent writing, phonemic awareness, and the essence of phonics, all simultaneously.

I know a lot of the views in this article are against what many teachers believe. So I would love to hear your thoughts! I would love to hear from anyone who tries this approach with their students.