Research Seminars 2011-12
Unless otherwise stated all seminars take place in the Group Room, 31 Claremont Crescent, and start at 1pm and are concluded by 2pm. There is no need to book a place, just turn up on the day.
For further information please contact Kathryn Sharpe (tel: 0114 222 2402, e-mail: k.sharpe@sheffield.ac.uk).
| December 2011 |
Seminar |
| Thursday 15th |
PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO ILLNESS THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED
It will hopefully be rescheduled for next semester, details will appear on this page.
Speaker: Dr Paula Clarke - Childhood and Inclusive Education Team, School of Education, University of Leeds
Title: Developing children's reading comprehension skills
Venue: Group Room, 31 Claremont Crescent
Time: 13:00-13:50
Lunch: A sandwich lunch will be available from 12:15-12:55 in The Common Room, 20 Claremont Crescent
Abstract:
Language comprehension and decoding skills are essential to reading for meaning (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). However for some children these skills develop out of step with one another. This talk will discuss the 'poor comprehender profile' which is characterised by intact decoding skills and weak language comprehension. It will refer to recent intervention research (Clarke, Snowling, Truelove & Hulme 2010) that has been conducted to examine causal explanations of this profile and evaluate the effectiveness of a range of teaching approaches and strategies in improving reading comprehension skills. The importance of vocabulary training will be expressed with reference to multiple context approaches to developing children's representations and understanding of words. Methods for supporting the reading comprehension skills of children with Down syndrome (DS) will then be considered. Evidence suggests that in children with DS reading comprehension ability typically lags behind word reading ability by approximately 12-18 months (e.g. Buckley et al., 1996). A new pilot project will be introduced which will evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of home based parent delivered intervention programme. This will target four components that are key to reading comprehension success; Vocabulary, Narrative, Inferencing and Strategy Use. Each component will be taught in each session and there will be 30 x 30 minute sessions in total. Activities will be based around segmented paragraphs from familiar books and will use lots of visual support including word webs, photographs and illustrations. Using a case series design, participants' progress will be measured over six week control and intervention periods. |
|
