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When a student with dyslexia is referred to Michael Matvy, EdS, NCSP, one of the first tasks for the school psychologist and assistive technology specialist at Knox County School District, in Knoxville, TN, is to break the cycle of remediation as sole treatment. Whether students are in elementary or secondary school, odds are they have been assigned to improve their visual reading skills in order to complete grade-level work.
Matvy takes a far different treatment approach, replacing remediation with self-accommodation for accessing class content. "The approach is to teach the student to accommodate themselves for the reading disability so they can gain access to academic experiences and learning that comes from being able to read print," he told ADVANCE.
Traditional treatment approaches that focus on helping students cope within the school curriculum are not adequate preparation for college-level study, he said. "Our schools are pretty good at helping kids cope with the curriculum, but in the long term that doesn't do them well," Matvy explained. "Bright students who are inadequate decoders may cope with the assignment that's being done in the classroom, but the long-term benefit to them may not be good."
Matvy defines a bright student as a child with an IQ above 100. Bright students who have dyslexia often are allowed classroom accommodations such as extra time to complete tests or assignments. They are more of a disservice to students than a benefit, he claims. "When they get to college, they are not going to have enough time to read all the books."
To illustrate the differences between classroom accommodations such as allowing students extra time to complete tasks and future college expectations, he relates an anecdote about a disastrous attempt at waterskiing. "I once had an experience where the boat didn't have enough power to pull me out of the water," he said. "I was just going through the water, and it was piling over my shoulders. I couldn't get out. To me, that's the way that slow reading is. The student is not going to get very far."
When working with these students, he said, "They often will read a sentence, read the sentence again, then read it again. What they're doing is building up the speed so it gets fast enough that they can try to understand what it says."
Their inability to read at a grade-level pace in the classroom often is their most cumbersome academic burden. Despite their high IQ, some students are placed into lower-level classes simply because they are slow readers.
"Research shows that comprehension increases with increased speed of reading," Matvy stated. "When I work with students who are inadequate visual decoders or inadequate visual readers, I find that they can sound out the words. But they are doing it very slowly, so the rate of their reading is so slow that it's not fast enough to have discourse."
Slow reading is inadequate reading and can impair comprehension of the subject matter, he believes. "They are recalling words, spending a lot of their energy trying to figure out what the next word is. They can do that by looking at the previous word, putting a phrase together, and trying to guess what the next word is. That's not reading. Reading is being able to quickly look at a word and turn that into an aural image and a recognized word. Decoding is not reading."
To address this issue Matvy uses an aural reading approach that is based on the use of audio texts. Every textbook used in the Knox County School System is available in audio form from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D). Most university texts also are available in audio form. Matvy trains students to use audio texts as a primary form of information gathering, while placing their original text in a supplementary role. The aural reading approach is part of the student's individualized education plan (IEP).
"I redefine the word 'read' to mean 'Do you understand what the author said?' We're not saying that you won't read visually anymore, but the student needs to learn 'no heavy lifting.' If a student has been through training and we realize their visual reading is not adequate to read a grade-level textbook but is adequate for reading the headings in the book or a short caption, they can read that caption," he explained.
The success of the aural reading approach requires student buy-in and a level of commitment outside the classroom. When he first meets with students, Matvy informs them that he also is an inadequate decoder and uses the method that he teaches. He then affirms the student's ability to succeed at grade level in the classroom.
"I tell them the reason they were picked to do it is because they are smart, because they can read better with their ears than their eyes, and because they can do grade-level work," he said. "That's the beginning of what I call self-awareness and self-advocacy."
Matvy tests them using grade-level materials. Some students may need to work below grade level in reading instruction, but they must be able to perform at peer level using texts in areas such as science and social studies. In his first session with a student, Matvy uses one of those texts to obtain a reading sample. Students with dyslexia typically read about 40 to 60 words per minute, with a 10 percent error rate, he has found.
He then uses an audio version of the textbook played at 250 to 300 words per minute and asks the student to repeat sentences they have heard or vocabulary words from a science text. He moves on to full paragraphs, asking the student the meaning of recorded passages. "This is beyond decoding," he explained. "They already showed that they can do the decoding. I'm trying to determine if they can get the main idea and get details about what it said."
This exercise demonstrates to students that they have the ability to comprehend grade-level work despite their visual reading difficulties. "I leave them with the experience of looking at what their visual decoding is like. Instead of reading printed material at 42 words per minute and mispronouncing a number of words, they are doing 278 words per minute and getting all of the words," he said.
During the second session, students learn to control the audio player. Parents are invited to attend so students can demonstrate their aural reading abilities and Matvy can answer any questions they have about the new learning approach. "They need to get the big picture of how the student, who has been struggling for years with decoding, can in a matter of hours begin to decode print rapidly and have the experience of reading the way that reading is intended to occur," he said.
Though it is not a required part of the training, Matvy asks students to set aside 30 extra minutes each day for pre-reading classroom material in their textbook before it is covered in class. "They have to eke out 30 minutes somewhere to do this," he said. "That's often viewed as extra because they still get assignments and have to do their homework. But I say it is like putting money in the bank-for students who do it immediately, the dividends come early."
Training a student in aural reading takes about two to three days. Matvy then meets with them monthly to monitor progress and check the equipment. Once training is complete, students generally gain confidence quickly from the results they see in their grades and classroom performance.
"For these students it's like opening the floodgates. They thrive on the language that's in a grade-school textbook," he said. "This explains why the IQ scores of students who are inadequate readers or dyslexic go down over time. They are not exposed to the rich language that comes in print. They can get that experience if they are reading a book and learning new words, whether it's an audio book or a print book."
For More Information
Alyssa Banotai is a Senior Associate Editor at ADVANCE. She can be reached at abanotai@advanceweb.com. To read a Web-exclusive companion article on writing and spelling strategies for students with dyslexia available June 18, click here.
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