The Importance Of Reading In Special Education

Reading is a very complex process and is difficult to teach to students with learning disabilities. No one reading program will work to teach all children with learning disabilites to read. Today, many students with learning disabilities cannot read or have limited reading skills. Parents, teachers, specialists, and advocates are extremely concerned with these results, because students are graduating without the abilities to read street signs, grocery items, or navigate around their communities. Read Well, Success for All, Reading Street, and Open Court are the most commonly used reading curriculum in elementary schools in Washington State. Washington State adopted the Read Well reading curriculum in two of the school districts in 2007. Read Well is a research based reading program that involves explicit and systematic instruction that focuses on decoding, practicing of the skills, and scaffolding of new skills. Read Well lesson can be …show more content…
Success for All was designed by John Hopkins University in partnership with the Baltimore School District. Students received 90 minutes of reading instruction in the areas of auditory discrimination, sound blending, partner reading, identifying parts of stories, and reading comprehension skills. The goal of Success for All is to reduce the number of referrals to special education and help improve reading skills of all children in the general education classrooms. Tutors are used to provide one on one instructions for students with or at risk for learning disabilities. The results of Success for All showed an increase in students reading abilities and special education placement had declined. However, more current research shows that students receiving Success for All instruction are still reading anywhere from a month to a year behind their