Prevent Reading Regression During COVID-19.

Summer regression is a well-researched topic and refers to students losing some of the skills they gained in a prior school year. This is primarily why the beginning of school years include a brief review and benchmark assessments. This year which an unprecedented transition to remote learning it is important for parents to keep regression in mind across all subject areas, especially reading.

Reading regression (and academic regression) should be monitored closely this summer, so it can be prevented as much as possible during COVID-19. Children learn and make progress towards goals best with synchronous instruction. Synchronous instruction is a student receiving live instruction from their instructor. Unfortunately, school closures that have been necessary for safety during the global pandemic of COVID-19 has drastically reduced, if not entirely eliminated, live instruction for children around the globe. While there are many benefits of asynchronous teaching where a teacher is not live, the effects of the transition to remote learning on the school-aged learners are still unclear.

With this information in mind, here are some things to consider if you have concerns about your child’s reading progress this year or if you are concerned about additional reading regression during COVID-19 distance learning or summer break.

What are the essential components needed for good reading instruction?

The US Department of Education denotes that good reading intervention should consist of instruction in the following areas:

Phonemic Awareness focuses on the manipulation of individual speech sounds in words. Some ideas are understanding rhyming words, blending phoneme (sounds) into words and nonsense words, deleting sounds from words or changing one sound within a word to create a new word. As defined by Scarborough and Brady (2002), phonological processing refers to the “the formation, retention, and/or use of phonological codes or speech while…speaking, listening, remembering, learning, naming, thinking, reading, or writing.”

Phonics focuses on many different areas that create a good strong reader. Some of these areas include: teaching individual phonics skills and sound/letter correspondence; teaching the syllable types and how to diagram words into syllable types to decode; morphology of suffixes, prefixes, root words and also understanding of when words do not sound out according to pattern (sight words).

Word study also should include spelling, which should be tied into the phonics pattern of study. Word attack skills help readers know how to adequately breakdown unfamiliar words into patterns so they can decode (read) or encode (spell). Good readers have knowledge of phonics and syllable patterns so they can attack words easily.

Vocabulary is related to reading because the more you read the more words you encounter. Breaking down words into roots, suffixes and prefixes expands word knowledge as well.

Reading Fluency is a very important skill in which reading becomes quick and automatic so that they reader can focus on the story elements to understand what they are reading. Non-fluent readers spend time laboring over each individual word that they miss the entire meaning of each sentence and sentence into paragraphs.

Reading Comprehension is putting all the skills together to efficiently read passages. One part of comprehension is decoding words, however, much care should be taken to explore where in the process comprehension breaks down. Some examples include: making inferences, making predictions, understanding point of view, drawing conclusions from other life knowledge, etc.

So much of what we do in life revolves around reading. Therefore, it is so important that children, adolescents and adult get the skills they need to read efficiently. The best reading instruction is a multi-sensory approach paired with systematic and sequential instruction. Instruction in just one of the above mentioned areas is not sufficient. Therefore, reading must be monitored across all areas to ensure progress and independence.

It is the position of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) that speech-language pathologists play a “critical and direct role in the development of literacy for children and adolescents” (ASHA, 2001, p. 1). This role includes the identification of children who are at risk for reading and writing problems and the development of remediation and compensatory skills that can be considered.

If you would like to schedule a virtual reading consultation with a pediatric speech-language pathologist to discuss reading regression, prevention or to take steps towards ongoing reading progress and support, please select a clinician and time that works best for your family using this link.

Wishing you wellness, ongoing progress and peace!