Decreasing Substitutions in Oral Reading

Students whose substitutions are caused by inadequate decoding ability wil benefit from the following interventions:

A.  Call the student’s attention to the insertion. Sometimes she is not aware of the habit. Allowing the student to continue only provides reinforcement for the mistakes.

B.  Encourage the student to read more slowly. Students often believe erroneously that good reading is fast reading. When students try to read more quickly than they are able, insertions may result.

C.  Use commercially prepared materials that are designed to promote fluent oral reading.

D.  Ask questions that require an exact answer. If the student usually follows a certain pattern in making insertions (such as adding adjectives), you may wish to provide questions for the student to review before reading the story. These questions can focus on the objects in the story described by the adjectives that are often inserted. This will cause the student to read more carefully. Use questions such as: “Does it say how big the frog was?” and “Was it a sunny, warm day; a sunny, cold day; or just a sunny day?”

E.  Have students read chorally.

F.  Play a tape recording in which the student made insertions. Ask the student to follow the written passage, stopping the tape recorder as often as necessary. Have the student write on the written passage the insertions that she made on the oral reading of the material. Use the student-corrected passages as a basis for discussing the problem.

G.  Have the student read along with a passage that has been tape-recorded.

H.  If the student makes many insertions, have her point to each word as she reads it. Have the student lift her finger up and bring it down on each word as it is read. Do not allow the student to continue this technique after the habit has disappeared.