National Reading Panel

Question: What is the National Reading Panel, and what evidence does it present about effective instructional methods, materials, and approaches? Answer: Under the instruction of No Child Left Behind Act 2001, the schools have to adopt programs which are based on rigorous scientific research which proves that these programs are effective in improving student achievement (Mertens, 2014 p. 8). Scientifically based research must involve systematic, rigorous and objective protocols to examine whether a school program is efficient or not. The significance of the scientifically based research is that it has many suggestions for policies in the education concerning the application and development of educational assessments. The NCLB Act marked a new beginning for children with disabilities. Under the law of IDEA (individuals with disability education act) special children with dyslexia and others were required to be included in classrooms of general students. NCLB and SBR were monitoring whether the IDEA laws were incorporated into the schools and whether the children with disabilities were getting a proper education (Mertens, 2014 p. 9).The national reading panel was a government body of the USA. It was formed in 1997 for assessment of the effectiveness of different programs used to educate children. Its aim was to assess the effectiveness of various educational approaches to teaching children to read (Mertens, 2014 p. 17). The panel issued a report in April 2000, which gave a summary of research on eight areas related to literary instruction. Instructions included in this report were phonemic awareness, fluency instruction, phonics, vocabulary, independent reading, test comprehension, teacher professi onal development and instruction on computer assistance.Qualitative research is an exploratory study. It is used to understand the underlying opinions, reasons and motivations. It gives an insight into a problem and assists to develop hypotheses or ideas for prospective quantitative research (Mertens, 2014 p. 26). However, quantitative research is used for quantifying a problem. It generates numerical data and or usable statistical data. It is used for quantifying opinions, attitudes, behaviour and other variables. It uses data that can be measured and use to uncover patterns and formulate facts of a research problem. The difference between experiment and quasi-experiment is that in quasi-experiments the participants are not assigned randomly whereas the participants in a real experiment are randomly assigned to either a control group or treatment group (Mertens, 2014 p. 28). In a quasi experiment, the control group and treatment group differ in factors other than the experimental treatment. The quasi-experiment has to control all the unknown factors statistically. The research documents the effectiveness of improvement in reading and changes in the brain by looking into the brain of young children who are encouraged to read by using the five basic instructions for the improvement of reading. They scan the brain of the children using MRI while they read to see the response of the brain upon stimulation (Blachman, 2013 p-19). Children who are exposed to a reading environment are found to have increased activity in some parts of the brain. These are the parts which help in comprehension and visual imagination of some reading material.The key people who helped in the understanding of dyslexia and multisensory structured language education are Dr Samuel T. Orton and Anna Gillingham (Blachman, 2013 p.11). Dr Orton and his team started using multisensory techniques during the mid-1920s. He proposed that kinaesthetic- tactile reinforcement of auditory and the visual association could correct the tendency of dyslexic children to confuse similar letters . Anna Gillingham based her work on Dr Orton's technique to form a teaching manual. Anna Gillingham and Bessie Stillman combined the multisensory techniques with structures of written English such as sounds, standard spelling rules and meaning units. Their work on understanding and creating a multisensory structure for learning is termed as Orton- Gillingham approach (Blachman, 2013 p.13).The common instructional practices of multisensory structured language education are phonology and phonological awareness, sound- symbol association, syllable instruction, morphology, syntax and semantics (Brady Shankweiler, 2013 p. 14).Reading is a complex work that requires the functioning of many regions of the brain together. The brain constantly changes as we grow from child to adult. Reading improves the connectivity between the various neural circuits of the brain that is essential for understanding a written word. The areas of the brain which function during reading receive an influx of bl ood which indicates its functioning. Reading changes the connection of neural circuits (Brady Shankweiler, 2013 p. 12).Science redefined the understanding of dyslexia and learning disabilities. Science proved that these learning disabilities have a scientific basis. Brain functioning of people with dyslexia was studied to understand its neurological basis (Blachman, 2013 p. 15). Today, we know that dyslexia and other learning disabilities have underlying neurological problems. fMRI of the brain of children with learning disabilities gave an idea about the biological causes of these diseases.Neuroscience gives the theoretical support required for the multisensory strategies. Neuroimaging studies show that the multisensory strategies help in the improvement of reading ability of children with reading disability (Blachman, 2013 p. 10).A person's awareness of phonological structure and sound structure of words is referred to as phonological awareness. It is a predictor of the reading a bility of individuals. Phonological awareness is the understanding of broad terms, identification of a large section of spoken language and understanding rhyme, alliteration, syllables and words (Metsala Ehri, 2013 p. 2). Phonemic awareness is the subcategory of phonological law. It includes narrow parts of the spoken language. It deals with the individuals sounds of words.Emergent literacy theory supports the phonemic awareness or the development of literacy in children (Metsala Ehri, 2013 p.11).Phonemic understanding is important for learning to read for consciously understanding the units of words and for being able to derive meaning from reading a written language. It helps in decoding the phonological representation of words. By skilfully decoding the phonemic units, a reader can comprehend the meaning of a language (Brady Shankweiler, 2013 p. 25-27).Three forms of phonological processes other than phonological awareness are syllable structure processes, substitution process es, and assimilation processes (Brady Shankweiler, 2013 p. 5).According to Brady and Shankweiler (2013 p. 7), five levels of phonemic awareness are: Awareness of rhyming words: an example can a child finish a rhyme such as red cat, blue ____? Awareness of syllables: example- Can a child say how many syllables are there in the word Mommy? Sound isolation: example- what is the beginning sound of the word cat? Phonemic blending: example- after hearing /b/a/t, in stretched pronunciation, the child can say bat. Phoneme manipulation: example- what word we get if we change M into T in the word mommy? References: Blachman, B. A. (Ed.). (2013).Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia: Implications for early intervention. Routledge. Brady, S. A., Shankweiler, D. P. (2013).Phonological processes in literacy: A tribute to Isabelle Y. Liberman. Routledge. Mertens, D. M. (2014).Research and Evaluation in Education and Psychology: Integrating Diversity With Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods: Integrating Diversity With Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods. Sage Publications. Metsala, J. L., Ehri, L. C. (Eds.). (2013).Word recognition in beginning literacy. Routledge. O'Connor, R. E., Vadasy, P. F. (Eds.). (2013).Handbook of reading interventions. Guilford Press. O'Connor, R. E., Vadasy, P. F. (Eds.). (2013).Handbook of reading interventions. Guilford Press. Rasinski, T. V., Blachowicz, C. L., Lems, K. (Eds.). (2012).Fluency instruction: Research-based best practices. Guilford Press. Swanson, H. L., Harris, K. R. (Eds.). (2013).Handbook of learning disabilities. Guilford press.