Chapter 4

IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN “AT RISK” FOR READING PROBLEMS

In developinga systematic approach for determining which children may demonstrate

problem in learning to read, we are faced, first of all, with the concept of definition of a child
who is “at risk” for reading difficulties. Several hypotheses that attempt to offer a fundation
for defining such children may may be found in the leterature. For a example, a child with a
mental age of less than 6 mounths might be classified as at risk based on limination in
cognitiv or ntellectual functioning (Kirk, kl8ebhan, & learner, 1978).

READINESS—A PERSPECTIVE

The concept, readiness, is not new in the literature or in the vocabulary of teachers of preschool
or primary-le children. The idea of readiness deelopment that is needed before a skil can
berelates KR a , p. Hoever.it must be emphasized that this state of development does not imply
that the mastery of particularskills isolated from one another will guarantee subsequent
emergence or development of the behavior, ability, or developmental system. Readiness is seen
to be a time in which various skills are consolidated or interrelatedSo as to allow for the
appearance or development of a new or elaborated skill. To expand beyond the skil orientation,
readiness can also be considered to be the time in which a childis mastering prerequisite
knowledgeand experiences that will permit the emergence of new or further devel-ental
behaviors. Readiness is not static; it is a dynamic process. In readiness, the child is actively
involved in experiencing, processing, comrehending, modefying, and internalizing information
that will allow the child too proceed yo the next faced of mastery, development, or maturity.

Reading Readimes

The period of readiness as applied to reading is seen to be the time in which a child prepares
physically, cognitively, socially, and especialy linguistically to master the feat of learning to
read. Readiness proponents have emphasized that there are prerequisites for the mastery of
reading that relate to areas of neurological functioning, auditory and visual efficiency and
perception, language and speech development, and social and personal maturity. Strang (1968)
presents in her brief overview of reading readiness the following areas that indicate a child's
preparedness for read.

Metareading
Metareading as an extension of the readiness concept refers to thegrowing knowledge that the
young child possesses about reading as aprocess. Metareading addresses what the child knows
about reading. In other words, metareading involves the process by which children can place
themselves in the possition of observers of the function; that is, they can step outside the
process and observe or analyze the process in action.

Metareading as an Indicator of High-Risk Children

Examination of a child's knowledge of the reading process can serve as a helpful indicator of a
readiness to read. Linguistically intact children enjoy taking on a metalinguistic role in which
they attempt to discover how language functions, what language does, and how they can
manipulate their environments with language. This usually takes the form of vocal or verbal
play in which children actually play and are then amused by manip-

ulating their own productions. A child as young as 18 months can be heard rehearsing a
repertoire of sounds in the context of song or varied intonation patterns, while a slightly more
sophisticated 3-year-old plays with words such h as fid dle-faddle or middle-maddle. The
preoccupation of primary-level children wth rhyming words is also a form of verbal play.

Metareading Evaluation Tasks

The preschool teacher or interventionist can stage or design varioustasks to observe and
evaluate a child's metareading knowledge based on the linguistic subsystems or components of
reading. The teacher can also observe as the child interacts or plays with books or other reading
materials without guidance or interference from adults. Metareading knowledge can be further
observed in a storytelling or storyreading setting where an adult tells or reads a story, book, or
other reading passage to a young child. Careful noting of what the child does in these situations
and subsequent analysis of the data as related to linguistic aspects of the reading model
presented in Chapter 3 will provide a helpful indication of what the child presently possesses
regarding knowledge of reading as written language.

1. Text cohesion
2. Pragmatigs
3. Semantigs
4. Syntax
5. Graphomoorphonemics

Nonverbal and Low-Verbal Children

The foregoing evaluation tasks assume a level of spoken language that allows the child to
communicate a knowledge of metareading. Low-verbal children or children with little or no
spoken language (hearing-impaired, severely language-disordered, and mentally retarded
children) may not process or demonstrate metareading knowledge in the same manner as do
children with more efficient use of the linguistic system. However, this does not mean that such
children do not possess any knowledge concerning the reading process. For such children,
many of the evaluation tasks can be modified in ways to allow for observation of metareading
knowledge across or the language components discussed previosly.

POSSIBLE HIGH-RISK INDICATORS RELATED TO SPOKENLANGUAGE

The following high-risk indicators related to spoken language at the four component levels of
phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics may alert the interventionist, teacher, or other
evaluator to the potential for reading problems. It must be remembered that the appearance or
evidence of one indicator may not by itself signal a probable reading difficulty. It does,
however, suggest that the child should be observed carefully.Observation of several high-risk
indicators should signal the need for intervention at the subsystem level indicated. All of these
indicators are assumed to be outside what is considered to be age-appropriate development.