Remedial reading comprehension material for weak readers at school and in therapy

In Flanders, there had long been a need for a functional programme to address problems with reading comprehension at school and in therapy. Therefore, through this PWO project, we realised the programme ‘Begrijpend lezen beter begrijpen: thematisch en functioneel oefenprogramma’ (Van Vreckem, Axters, & Linsen, 2014).

The programme is intended for children from the first grade to the beginning of secondary education.

It can be used both individually and in small groups. It consists of different work formats that connect to the most essential reading strategies necessary to understand a text: predicting before reading, verbal comprehension, interpreting at paragraph and text level, extrapolating and metacognitive action. The programme is thematically structured and varies in technical difficulty. The difficulty level of the texts has been calculated by a specialised service of CITO publishers. There is a diversity of text types such as instructions, letters, fantasy stories, informative texts, newspaper articles, newsletters, e-mails and blog texts. Each theme has a guidebook, a book with the reading texts and a copy collection. The guide contains the objectives for each assignment, a description of the material, the text characteristics and the technical reading difficulty level of the text, a description of the working method, instructions and feedback. The programme includes a general guide describing the theoretical background. The programme was developed on an evidence-based basis.

It is consistent with the Vlaamse Test Begrijpend Lezen (Van Vreckem, Desoete, De Paepe, & Van Hove, 2010). 

The programme is available to the field (increased care at school, rehabilitation centre, private practice for speech therapists, remedial educationalists and psychologists, B.O).