Abstract:

At Brainerd High School (BHS), approximately 134 students receive special education reading instruction. Further, a number of students arrive at BHS annually with beginning-level reading ability. As students age, struggling readers become disengaged from academics and reading. This is due to the increased difficulty of tasks and the amount of time and effort they need to complete these tasks. At the high school level, reading is mandatory to obtain information to be successful in all areas of academics, but some students are still at the level of learning reading skills to understand words and sentences, without the ability to navigate multiple paragraphs or chapters of text. The increased need to read plus the increased difficulty of curriculum leads struggling readers to avoid reading tasks completely [1]. Adolescents who read significantly below grade level are more likely to drop out of school, face adulthood with greater chances of poverty and face a greater likelihood of addiction and correctional involvement. For this project, interventions applied at the secondary level that can be implemented with the current resources and staffing at BHS were examined. Increased screenings and implementation of these supports will decrease the skill gaps between these identified struggling readers and their nondisabled peers, which in turn will lead to greater opportunities as they transition from high school to adult life. This information collected is part of a greater project: a department-wide resource in a directory format that indexes specific skill deficits and intervention options to remediate these skill gaps; teacher and special education team access to screening materials; online tools for differentiation and assessment accessible to all staff; and placement guidelines for the pull-out special education reading classes, presented through a digital format. This includes explanations and how-to tutorials for those unfamiliar with these resources and screening tools.

Keywords:

Secondary reading, reading interventions, remediation, compensation, specific learning disabilities, adolescent, reading strategies, reading instruction.