H860 Reading Difficulties

Week 11

RD and Linguistic Diversity

Today’s session

1. Online memo feedback2. Brief return to fluency3. ELLs and RD4. Break5.

Online memo

In terms of getting to grips with the topic, was the online memo more or less useful than the offline memos?

A. I learnt more through the online memo

B. I learnt more through the offline memos

C. I learnt about the same

Thoughts about posting to the group

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A. Think more about the assignment than usual, in a productive way

B. Think more about the assignment than usual, in a stressful way

C. Didn’t really change how I approached the assignment

D. Other

Knowing the class would read my contribution made me:

Final projects update

• Poster day• Paragraph plan checking

Today’s session

1. Online memo feedback2. Brief return to fluency3. ELLs and RD4. Break5.

Today’s session

1. Online memo feedback2. Brief return to fluency3. ELLs and RD4. The wider demands of academic

language

Our collective experiences of language diversity

Some wider, sobering background

• Language minorities are under-represented in programs for gifted and talented

• Language minorities are over-represented in certain special education categories: – Learning disabilities– Mental retardation– Emotional disturbance

• BUT, they are identified for special ed. 2-3 years later than language majority students

Reading Disability or ELL difficulty?

• Identifying specific reading disabilities in a monolingual context is easy, right?!

Reading Disability or ELL difficulty?

Enter the English-language-learner (ELL)…

• Reading is behind their native English peers• Is a specific reading disability present?

Geva: phonological processing difficulties are a hallmark of dyslexia across languages…

…so we just administer the CTOPP?

CTOPP recap

For ages 5-6 For ages 7-24

Phonological awareness: •Elision•Blending words•Sound matching

Phonological memory:•Memory for digits•Nonword repetition

Rapid naming:•Rapid Color Naming•Rapid Object Naming

Phonological memory:•Memory for digits•Nonword repetition

Phonological awareness: •Elision•Blending words•Blending Nonwords•Segmenting Nonwords

Supplemental Subtests:•Phoneme Reversal•Segmenting Words

Rapid Naming:•Rapid Digit Naming•Rapid Letter Naming•Rapid Color Naming•Rapid Object Naming

Supplemental Subtest:•Blending Nonwords

How helpful would the CTOPP be in determining whether my ELL student has dyslexia?

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33% 33%33%1. Because it is largely

based on sounds, not large chunks of language, it would be a fair (not perfect) measure of my student’s PA

2. Given the English-base of the test, it would be really hard to interpret, thus not so useful

3. I’m not sure!

TOPPS

• Spanish version matched on:- number of syllables and phonemes- position of manipulation

• http://www.cal.org/acquiringliteracy/assessments/index.html

• What kind of Spanish?

Specific Reading Disability vs. ELL diffs?

• We can start to approximate phonological processing skills

Other (proximal) things to consider when assessing…

• Fatigue• Multiple assessment/portfolio approach• Rigby• Error analysis e.g.

– Decoding• Grammar/phonics mistakes that are

language based• Native pronunciation of identically spelled

words

Other (proximal) things to consider when assessing…

• Emerging cognate assessments

Week 7

Recap from HT-820

• The Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT)

• Translated into: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, French, German, Haitian-Creole, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese

• Based on the Woodcock-Johnson-Revised (1989) Cognitive Battery:

– Picture Vocabulary– Oral Vocabulary: Synonyms– Oral Vocabulary: Antonyms– Verbal Analogies

Week 7

Half-way-there solution

• Administration of all the subtests in the English language first.

• Each item failed in English is re-administered in the

native language. • Total score is items correct from both languages

combined.

• Sadly, still issues e.g. - Cultural bias in some pictures

- Norms compiled from administration of all items, but some translations have reduced item numbers

- Complexity across tests very uneven, causing content validity issues

Week 7

Going Further

Week 7

Dynamic assessment revisited

• Goal of DA: “to establish the amount of change that can be induced during interactions with the examiner during the assessment process”

• Methods for DA of language:

a) Testing the limitsb) Graduated prompting

c) Test-teach-retest

Determine readiness for progress In intervention

Differentiate disorders fromdifferences

Week 7

Case Studies

Child A, 4 years• Spoke mainly Spanish, using single words• EOWPVT-R SS = 67, Preschool Language

Scales (adapted), 4/10 items

Child B, 4;6years• Spoke mainly Spanish, using words, phrases

and sentences• EOWPVT-R SS = 71, PLS 7/10

Week 7

Case Studies

Week 7

Learning Strategies Checklist

Week 7

Case Studies

Child A• Motivated and attentive, but little quantitative change

in pre/post test scores (some qualitative change). Little generalization so future goals were to work on this, as well as helping A understand her correct vs. incorrect responses

• Probable language-learning problem and inconsistent use of strategies

Child B

• Gained maximum modifiability score. DA enabled her to expressive vocabulary performance and demonstrate

true abilities

Week 7

DA Summary

• Measures of change such as gain scores, modifiability and qualitative change are extremely useful in differentiating language difference from disorder

• But remember gain scores may not be equal across the same test and in normal distributions, the centre point is more stable than the tails.

****

• DA results in high validity, low reliability (same issue with reading comprehension)

Other (distal) things to consider when assessing…

• Consider background knowledge of child• Get perspective from parents • Has the child has gaps in schooling?

• http://www.ldldproject.net/model.html

Summary so far

• Phonological difficulties across languages is red flag for specific reading disability

• BUT, certainty of identification is hard…

…Response-to-Intervention may be a particularly useful model as a result

And what is our intervention?

The favorite five:

1. Phonemic awareness2. Phonics3. Fluency4. Vocabulary5. Text comprehension

…with adjustments

The challenges of academic language

Schleppegrell

‘‘tell about one thing only and in such a way that it sounds important’’

• Formal style that is very different to conversational style

• Most familiar to children from middle-class homes

Teaching academic language in schools

• http://dww.ed.gov/see/see.cfm?PA_ID=6&T_ID=13&P_ID=23&rID=2

Academic language

• Also a challenge for some African-American students – see Charity article.

Peer learning

• HGSE twist – using virtual worlds to intensify/specialize the learning experience

• River City Project• Open example: Second Life

Break