Improving the Responsiveness of Students with Chronic Behavioral Challenges to Reading Instruction

When Nothing Seems To Work:

Best Practices For Improving the Responsiveness of Students with Chronic Behavioral Challenges to Reading Instruction

by Gregory J. Benner

Reading is the pivotal skill that allows children to achieve at high levels and become reflective, lifelong learners. Becoming a fluent reader is a prerequisite for success in any academic area and for success in our society. Furthermore, knowing how to read is related to personal resilience and overcoming social obstacles and, thus, has far-reaching positive effects. In the Nation's Report Card for fourth grade reading, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the reading scores of low performing children have generally declined over the last 10 years while those of high performing students increased. The reading performance of middle and high school students also remains a major concern. Only 30% of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level and 28% of eighth-grade students were functioning below the basic.

Students with chronic behavioral challenges have made little or no reading progress, especially those students beyond grade 2. These students are described as nonresponders. Nonresponders are those students who, despite participating in core and supplementary reading instructional programs, fail to acquire beginning reading skills within the normal range. Nonresponsiveness does not seem to be limited to students with learning disabilities; researchers have found that the majority of students with chronic behavioral difficulties experience reading difficulties. Reports on the prevalence of reading difficulties among students with emotional disturbance (ED) have ranged from 31% to 81%. Thus, the majority of students with chronic behavior challenges have moderate to severe reading problems that are very difficult to improve over time. Given the difficulty educators face in building the reading skills of these students, it is not surprising that those who serve these students have described them as 'troubled and troubling'.

What works to improve the responsiveness of students with behavioral challenges? Educators and researchers have identified four best practices for improving the responsiveness of students with behavioral challenges to reading instruction. First, provide explicit instruction. There is a great deal of evidence supporting the use of explicit instruction procedures and instructional design principles on students with behavior problems.

Explicit instruction procedures include the following:

(a) begin the lesson with a short review of previous, prerequisite learning,
(b) begin the lesson with a short statement of goals,
(c) present new material in small steps, with student practice following each step,
(d) give clear and detailed instructions and explanations,
(e) provide a high level of active practice for all students,
(f) ask a large number of questions, check for student understanding, and obtain responses from all students,
(g) guide students during initial practice,
(h) provide systematic feedback and corrections, and
(i) provide explicit instruction and practice for seatwork exercises, and where necessary, monitor students during seatwork.

The effective instructional design principles framework incorporates the following six organizing principles:

(1) big ideas, which are the fundamental concepts and principles that facilitate efficient acquisition of knowledge in a content area,
(2) mediated scaffolding, which refers to the personal guidance, assistance, and support that teachers, materials, or tasks provide a learner early in the content learning process,
(3) conspicuous strategies, which are a series of steps that proficient learners purposely follow in solving a problem or achieving an outcome,
(4) strategic integration, which is the combining of essential information in meaningful ways that results in new and more complex learner understanding of a topic,
(5) primed background knowledge, which involves providing learners a brief reminder that acts as a memory trigger and allows the learner to remember what it is that needs to be done in order to solve a task or retrieve pertinent information, and
(6) judicious review, which involves practice of previously learned information that is sufficient enough so that the learner performs the task or recalls the information without hesitation, distributed over time, cumulative, and varied in such a way that the knowledge is applied to a wide variety of situations and settings.

It is essential that educators combine explicit instruction procedures with effective instructional design principles to build reading skills of students with behavioral difficulties. Such instruction not only improves the reading skills of students with challenging behaviors but also decreases the interfering influence of problem behavior on instruction. Explicit instruction provided to students with behavior problems should be of sufficient intensity (40 minutes a day for five days a week) and occur early.

The format (e.g., one on one, group, or classroom) of instruction greatly impacts the responsiveness of students with behavior difficulties to instruction. Instruction delivered in a one-on-one format either by trained volunteers, peers, or teachers has been recommended by educators who serve students with challenging behaviors. Moreover, it is important to note that in complex areas such as basic reading skill development it may be necessary for teachers to use scripted programs built upon explicit instruction procedures and effective design principles. It would not only be time consuming and expensive for each classroom teacher to develop an effective basic reading skills curriculum but such a curriculum is also fraught with a high degree of error. There is compelling evidence that supports the use of scripted programs rather than teacher-developed approaches to teach complex skills.

Second, apply positive behavioral supports to manage the behaviors of students with behavioral difficulties during reading instruction. Researchers have found that the problem behaviors of students with emotional disturbance are moderately to strongly related to their responsiveness to reading intervention. Coercion theory offers an important rationale for the use of positive behavioral supports to improve responsiveness. Coercion theory asserts that many students with severe behavioral challenges have learned that arguing, escalation, confrontation, aggression, and noncompliance often lead to escape from undesirable tasks such as homework completion or from compliance with repeated requests to behave appropriately, for example. Escape/avoidance of undesirables becomes the function that drives many of the problem behaviors displayed by these students and their negative interactions with others (e.g., peers, caregivers, and teachers).

Due to the severity and frequency of disruptive behaviors, a student may be allowed to escape or avoid many academic tasks over time while the achievement gap between them and their peers continues to broaden. Teachers should be careful not to allow students to escape/avoid academic tasks that they are capable of completing. Although allowing the student to escape from such tasks may provide teachers a temporary break from the problem behaviors of students (e.g., sending the kid to office without having to do required work,) such a response actually increases the likelihood that the student will engage in problem behaviors to escape undesirable tasks in the future.

Third, the reading skills of students with behavioral challenges will be increased by building automaticity in phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading fluency. In other words, educators should use instructional techniques that enhance students' ability to effortlessly complete foundational academic tasks without conscious thought to step-by-step process (i.e., automaticity). Researchers have found that fluency, or automaticity, appears to be the most influential skill in the development of the academic functioning of students with behavioral challenges.

When foundational reading tasks become automatic the brain recognizes these simple and familiar tasks, processes the information, and automatically applies the correct rules to the procedure without immense cognitive effort. Because fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding the words, they can focus their attention on what the text means, whereas less fluent readers must focus their attention on figuring out the words, leaving them little attention for understanding the text. Researchers have found that building automaticity with reading tasks not only improves overall academic functioning, but also increases neurological activity in the area of the brain that deals with automatic retrieval of information.

Finally, use Curriculum Based Measurement to monitor the automaticity of students. Based on over 30 years of scientific research, CBM was designed to assess and build academic fluency or automaticity. A typical CBM requires the student to complete brief, timed exercises using materials drawn directly from the child's academic program. Passage of recent legislation (e.g., Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004) highlights the need to assess educational need, write measurable goals, monitor progress, report progress to parents, and make revisions in the IEP to address any unexpected lack of progress. The use of ongoing progress monitoring may also be a powerful tool addressing the issue of responsiveness to intervention (RTI). CBM not only provides teachers and parents technically adequate assessment data, it also has produced significant results on the performance and motivation of students with behavioral difficulties.

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About the author

Greg Benner is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Contact him at gbenner@u.washington.edu.

©September 2005 Greg Benner

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by grants from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (No. H324X010010, H324D010013, and H325D990035). Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Education, and no endorsement should be inferred.
Requests for copies of this manuscript should be addressed to Gregory J. Benner, Ph.D., University of Washington, Tacoma Education Program, Box 358435, 1900 Commerce St., Tacoma WA 98402.
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