I haven't written much about my job recently. I know there are some that read this blog who are school psychologists, and they probably wonder why I don't write a lot about what I'm doing. I do follow some expertly written professional blogs in my field and from time to time, am amazed at how smart some people are. The process of learning has always been difficult for me, and even in my own family, I am a lot of times "outwitted", "out-thought", and "outplayed" by my siblings.
However, there is much going on in research, and one interesting study I've recently read had to do with "timing" and reading fluency. The author of the study hypothesized that we all function rhythmically, especially when we read. Increasing fluency and comprehension in reading (after you can "decode" words) can be accomplished by helping children set an internal clock mechanism which will drive how quickly they respond to printed words. The study found that a child who has difficulty "keeping the beat", for example, clapping accurately to a metronome set 60 seconds a minute, also will have difficulty reading fluently enough for comprehension. In the study, those children were given several weeks of training (10 minutes a day or so) of learning to keep rhythms accurately and their reading fluency monitored. The outcomes were significant enough for this study to be published in a well-known research journal.
In my view, this is thinking outside the box at its best. I wonder what reaction from parents and school administration I'd get if I would work with a group of struggling non-fluent readers and duplicated this study. Parents might think it was a waste of time-it sounds a little crazy. I ran this idea by the Spouse, who gave me a look like, you MUST be joking. But what if some solutions to problems we encounter in life are exactly like this-so "odd" that we miss them? If this method would help my child become a better reader, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Here's a blog which addresses this, and other issues, but it's kinda technical, and may be of no interest to most of you:
http://www.ticktockbraintalk.blogspot.com/
1 comment:
Interesting - we were using DIBELS to progress monitor, and noticed an increase in performance mid-assessment if the child was given a ball to roll back and forth from one hand to the other while decoding for syllables. Could be the same effect - the back-and-forth of the ball may create a 'metronome' of sorts.
Gotta think out of the box, for sure.
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