A Workshop to Incorporate Language Development in Teaching Reading

It is the purpose of this paper to describe a workshop designed to teach elementary school teachers how to incorporate language development activities during reading instruction, particularly with children who have language-based reading difficulties. A WORKSHOP TO INCORPORATE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN TEACHING READING Dixie D. Songer and Sheldon L. Stick UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN Speech-language pathologists and educators in Elementary Education are becoming increasingly aware of the need to include specific speech and language activities as a part of regular classroom instruction (Andrews & Brabson, 1977; England, 1973; Jones, 1972; Pickering & Kaelber, 1978; Simon, 1975). This increased interest is related to: (1) the relationship between language and reading skills (Mattingly, 1972; Smith, 1975; Snyder, 1981; Stark, 1975 ; Stark & Wallach, 1981; Wiig & Semel, 1976); (2) the relationship between language development and academic success ( Carlson, Gruenwald, & Nyberg, 1981; England, 1973; Nelson, 1981); (3) the relationship between reading skills and cognitive development (Gallagher & Quandt, 1981; Jenkins & Heliotis, 1981; Sawyer and Lipa, 1981); and, (4) the documentation that phonology, morphology, syntax and seffi'IDtics are integral components to a reading program (Anastasiow, 1970; Good!11'ID, 1974; Magee & Newcome, 1978; McDonnel, 1975; Monroe & Rogers, 1964; Smith, 1975; Snyder, 1980; Vogel, 1977; Wiig & Semel, 1976). It is the purpose of this paper to describe a workshop designed to teach elementary school teachers how to incorporate language development activities during reading instruction, particularly with children who have language-based reading difficulties. This integrative reading-language program is carried out in a regular classroom setting and illustrates how teachers can help students improve their language skills and concomitantly gain more meaning from' their printed texts by improving the use of predicting, confinning, and integrating strategies during reading instruction. The main themes of the workshop are: a rationale for the relationship between reading and language; the integrative language activities; general guidelines for implementing the integrative reading-language approach; and a workshop evaluation. A Rationale for the Integrative Language-Reading Approach Many students have reading problems because of covert associated or primary language deficiencies despite an apparent ability to communicate with peers and family members. Such children might not understand how given lexical units can be used and combined in multiple linguistic contexts, and therefore be unfamiliar with the vocabulary and the complexity of the syntax in their reading books even though they can read words and use them in restricted contexts. The result is a failure to understand the printed text