By Rhonda Stone of Read Right Systems
Part 2 of 2
If it doesn’t work, why keep doing it? That is one interpretation of what Albert Einstein meant when he said: “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Special education programs across America continue to be locked into the 150-year-old view that students who struggle with reading do so because they do not have sufficient word attack and decoding skills. How is it possible, then, that many SpEd students can read this second sentence (the first one is on our Home page) with only the clue that the sentence is about TREES:
I h_v_ b_g tr_ _ s _n m_ b _ _k y_ _ d.
It obviously isn’t possible to decode the words in this sentence. To read it, the brain relies on far more complex and sophisticated neural activity to anticipate the meaning. Anticipation is what drives all human function, including reading! Consider this from Kajaani University of Applied Sciences in Finland, a nation that routinely outperforms the United States in reading: “Reading, we conclude, is not a matter of decoding linguistic information. Far from being a text-driven process, it depends on integrating both sensory and motor processes in an anticipatory meaning generation based on the history of experience and cultural context of the reader,” by Timo Järvilehto Veli-Matti Nurkkala and Kyösti Koskela, in “The Role of Anticipation in Reading,” published in the peer-reviewed journal Pragmatics & Cognition, Volume 17, Issue 3, Jan 2009, p. 509 – 526. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.17.3.02jar
Few would disagree that competent reading ability is the foundation for achieving success in elementary, secondary, and collegiate education. So, why not re-think Special Education, and do everything you can to ensure that instruction is fully aligned with current brain science? That is what Read Right methodology has done—and it is producing results Special Education administrators and teachers never thought possible. Results like these: 507 students—a mixture of elementary, middle school, and high school students—in an average of only 40.2 hours of participation in Read Right gained an average of 2.1 grade levels in reading as measured by the comprehension sub-section of the Gates Mac-Ginitie Test of Reading. The Normal Curve Equivalency gain score was 10.6. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not! Read Right unleashes the power of the brain to do what brains do.
For your next reading intervention purchase, add something with a proven track-record that does NOT repeat what you’ve already tried with lackluster results. Your students can experience one to two full years’ gain in reading ability in one school year or less. Train your SpEd teachers and teaching assistants in Read Right methodology. Help your students become impressively successful readers.
