Development of Remedial Programs

It is widely known that many children with reading problems have “phonological core deficits” (Stanovich, 1988). There is also evidence that another subgroup of these children have deficits in rapid naming (Morris, Steubing, Fletcher, Shaywitz, Lyon, Shanweiler, Katz, Francis, & Shaywitz, 1998). Children with reading problems need an effective remedial program so that they can benefit from ordinary classroom instruction on fluency. We recommend including the following in a supplemental remedial program carried out in groups of six or fewer children. These are fast paced programs making maximal use of instructional time that include:

Phonological and Strategy Training or PHAST. The PHAST program explicitly instructs children in basic phonological aspects of reading and in the use of four different word identification strategies using key words. Each lesson begins with skill-building which includes practice on 120 key word patterns, learning different vowel pronunciations, instruction in vowel combinations and affixes. The word identification strategies instructed are
- Word identification by analogy.
- Attempting different vowel pronunciations.
- Seek the Part you Know (SPY).
- Peeling off.
Speeded Word Retrieval (SWR) Training. The SWR program is based on the RAVE-O program (Wolf & Miller, 1997). This is designed to assist children with rapid naming deficits achieve fluency and automaticity in decoding. A special set of computerized games have been designed to allow for maximal practice on various sublexical patterns. Another emphasis of the program is on the direct integration of vocabulary development and increased lexical retrieval skills using word-webs.

Completed Activities:

Analysis of Remedial Reading Programs. One common critique of remedial reading programs is that they do not motivate children to learn to read. We have carried out a theoretical analysis of some popular remedial reading programs for their motivational features. This appears in:
- Quirk, M. P., & Schwanenflugel, P.J. (2004). Do supplemental remedial reading programs address the motivational issues of struggling readers? An analysis of five popular programs. Reading Research and Instruction, 43, 1-19. A table depicting a synopsis of our findings can be found here.