Reading Interventions and Strategies

Children experience difficulties in learning to read for a variety of reasons, including cognitive factors such as decoding (ability to pronounce written words) problems, psychological reasons such as lack of interest and motivation, and environmental differences such as inadequate facilities at home as well as in the classroom. The school psychologist must consider all these potential sources of impediment to acquiring reading skills and then develop a plan to address the cause(s). The existing policy—diagnosing poor readers who have a learning disability (LD) and poor readers who do not have a learning disability by administering an intelligence test and a reading achievement test—is not helpful in identifying the source of the reading problem, nor does it help in devising appropriate remedial procedures (Aaron, 1997). A ...