How to Use SOR to Support Students Who Struggle with Word Recognition & Comprehension
Well hey there!
We’re so glad you’re here. Now over the last month, we’ve been talking all about how to use the Science of Reading and effective reading instruction strategies to support students with varying needs. We’ve talked about supporting students who are reading on grade level, supporting students who struggle with decoding and word recognition, we’ve talked about supporting students who struggle with comprehension, and today we’re going to talk about our last group of students,
Students who struggle with word recognition and comprehension
Now, when I first started learning about structured and systematic phonics instruction as part of my Orton-Gillingham-based training I learned all the strategies to provide direct and explicit strategies to support students’ decoding ability. I felt really confident in my ability to help students learn to “sound out words” effectively. And I left it at that.
I was under the impression that if I could get students to “sound out words” effectively everything else would fall into place. Specifically, once students could decode words, that comprehension would follow. The problem was, that wasn’t a completely accurate picture.
While Scarborough’s Rope coined by Hollis Scarborough in 2001 isn’t new, the depiction has definitely started to gain more traction over the last several years. What it helps us to understand is that word recognition or being able to “sound out words” is part of the equation.
The problem is that I was working primarily with students with dyslexia and there was this idea that all students with dyslexia only struggled with word recognition and that their language comprehension abilities were entirely age-appropriate. But that wasn’t always the case. And especially as we widen the lens to all struggling readers (not just those with dyslexia), we realize…
…there are a large number of students who will struggle with both word recognition and comprehension.
More simply stated, they will have difficulty sounding out words and difficulty comprehending what they’re reading even after they sound it out correctly.
If we look at the image below, creating axes for a student’s word recognition ability and comprehension ability, we see that we have a continuum. Now students’ abilities on each of these axes may range between weak and strong in both areas. The students we are thinking about, have relative difficulty in both word recognition “sounding out words” and comprehension “understanding the meaning of words, sentences, or passages.”
Just because we improve a student’s word recognition ability does not mean they will automatically become a “typical reader” or “on-level” reader. Instead, we would potentially end up moving students from Group D to Group C.
So how do we support these students who need support in both word recognition and comprehension?
First and foremost, we have to recognize this will be a longer process.
If we need to solidify a student’s ability to decode words - we need to make sure we are using a systematic and sequential phonics-based instructional approach. We talked more about that here!
If we need to solidify a student’s ability to comprehend - we will need to identify where the specific areas of breakdown are occurring and provide explicit and targeted comprehension instruction. We talked more about that here!
If we need to support both areas, we need to make sure we are utilizing an approach that will support and not overwhelm our students.
There are a few ways in which you can do this depending on your setting.
If you are in the classroom -
Ideally, you want to be providing a portion of your instruction to the full group. Then you want to group your students into small groups for additional support. There are many ways to make this small group time work.
Some schools provide a specific time for this targeted small group approach (“what I need” time) in which the students are broken into groups and get support from one teacher out of a team of teachers. You could break students into Groups A, B, C, & D which would allow the Group D students to move a little slower through the content in order to focus on both word recognition strategies and aligned comprehension strategies
Other schools, use “centers-based" blocks in which the class rotates through centers and each group has a period of time to work with the teacher on their specific areas of need. Again, Group D would be moving at a slower pace to provide time to work through the word recognition and aligned comprehension strategies
If you’re working with students in a small group or 1:1 setting -
If you’re working in an intervention or special education setting, there are two key strategies to supporting students who struggle with both word recognition and language comprehension.
1 - Make sure you are using one activity to support multiple targets.
We talked more about what this looks like here! While you are addressing specific systematic decoding skills and progression, you can also be working on targeting those other areas of language need by asking students to define words, sort words, and answer comprehension questions related to a passage with a specific phonogram target.
2 - Make sure to take breaks between concepts to ensure that skills are generalizing.
In our clinic, we typically work in blocks. So for example, we may work on new word recognition concepts for 8 weeks, and then we will complete a midpoint assessment, after we complete that midpoint assessment we will see where students need additional support and will take time to address those specific areas of need with targeted intervention activities.
For example, if this student needed extra support in vocabulary development and writing, we would take a couple of weeks off to focus specifically on those areas. Often times we do this either using targeted activities or by incorporating a book into our lessons. This will help not only target those extra areas of need but will also give students the necessary opportunity to generalize the skills they’re working on to other contexts.
By incorporating books into our sessions, we can help draw a connection between the sound patterns students have been learning, and then also work on specific skills that need extra support. So given the data presented above, we have a student who needs additional support specifically in vocabulary and writing (and we don’t want to forget about comprehension since that was such a big area of need in the original assessment).
If you’re interested in applying this strategy with ready-to-use book units, check out the 5 Core Components of Literacy Library!
So there you have it, in order to support students who need support with both word recognition and comprehension - you will want to -
Move a little slower
Take a bit longer on the concepts
and
Make sure that students are applying those word recognition strategies directly to an immediate text-based application…no word lists without seeing how those patterns connect to authentic literature and informative texts!!!
If you are looking for more information about structured literacy intervention and what the research actually supports, grab our Science of Reading Blueprint. This blueprint will help you understand the 3 key scientific models that drive effective literacy instruction, learn how to integrate the research into practice, and provide simple checklists that will help you weave the science of reading into your instruction.