EUN640

Understanding Reading &

Writing Difficulties
Week 7: Working memory, fluency, text
structure, and comprehension… &
implications for reading and writing
difficulties
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By the end of Week 7, you will be able to:
• Describe what reading fluency and reading comprehension are, and
why they are critical to reading success,
• What text structure is, and why it is are critical to writing (and reading)
success,
• Describe how reading fluency, reading comprehension, and text
structure skills are impacted for students with reading and writing
difficulties, and
• Explain how to support students to develop reading fluency, reading
comprehension, and text structure skills, within a multi-tiered
approach.
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 Link to assessment
Reading fluency, reading comprehension, and text
structure skills skills are impacted for students with
reading and/or writing difficulties, and this is a key
content areas that you will demonstrate your
knowledge of in Assessment 1 (Analytical Essay).

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 • Why do we need to know
about working memory?
• Content recap
Tutorial • Assessing skills
overview • Support across the tiers
• Assessment support: Specific
writing support
Working memory
• Our mental “note pad”

• Holds verbal and visual information

• Has time and capacity limitations

• Can only be “refreshed” by receiving

the information again
• Long term memory and working
memory work together
(Baddeley, 2006; Baddeley & Hitch, 2019)
©
 CRICOS No.00213J
Attention Attention
Working & implications for reading and writing
• Around 10% of students have working memory difficulties (Gathercole et al., 2006)

• Students use working memory to:

• hold and sequence sounds for reading and spelling

• hold, connect, and encode ideas in written text

• access long-term memory for phonology and meaning for reading comprehension and fluency.

When reading a long sentence, paragraph or passage, working memory is what allows us to hold on to and
integrate information we read early on with information that comes later. Students with strong decoding skills but
weak working memories often comment that they “can’t remember anything!” from a page that they just read.

• Some research indicates that working memory difficulties impact semantic (vocabulary) storage,
thereby impacting reading comprehension (Nouwens et al., 2017)
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 Reading fluency

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Reading fluency

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Why is fluency important?
Fluent reading supports reading comprehension.

When students read fluently, their cognitive

resources can be redirected from focusing on
decoding and towards comprehending the text.

For this reason, fluency is sometimes described

as the bridge from word recognition to
comprehension.
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EUN640: Understanding Reading & Writing Difficulties
<Add your department, faculty or division name here> We will just watch Lesson 1 (until 7:30)
 Tutorial task: Discussion questions
1. How does Linda Farrell describe the elements of reading fluency?

2. In what order should they be addressed in oral reading practice?

3. Why doesn’t Linda time Chloe’s reading at first?

4. How does Linda describe the importance of accurate reading?

5. Why does Linda keep track of the number of repetitions Chloe makes?

6. What else did you notice?

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 Text structure
Refers to the way authors organize information in texts

AKA the “skeleton” that gives a text a “shape”

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 Text types vs text structures
Text types Text structures
• Narrative text • Description

• Descriptive text • Cause and Effect

• Expository text • Compare and Contrast

• Procedural or instructional text • Chronology/Sequence

• Argumentative or persuasive text • Problem and Solution

https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/choosing- https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/comprehe
and-using-classroom-texts/understanding-text-types nsion/teaching-text-structure

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 Text structure: Why is it important?
• focus attention & allocate working memory resources to key concepts
and relationships
• anticipate what’s to come
• monitor their comprehension as they read
• structure their writing to get their message across
There are two over-arching types of text structures: narrative
texts and information texts.
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Tutorial task: Narrative elements
1. In each version, which elements are included, altered, or missing?
❑ The exposition: introduces the setting, characters, and conflict of the story.
❑ Rising action: introduces the challenges and obstacles that the characters face.
❑ Climax: the turning point of the story, where the conflict is resolved.
❑ Falling action: describes the aftermath of the climax, as the characters deal with
the consequences of their actions.
❑ Resolution: ties up any loose ends and brings the story to a close.
2. Which version is closer to the original? Why do you think that is?
3. How do you think a written narrative may have looked? Why?
4. What else do you notice?
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Target story: The Rubber Raft

Last summer, Michael and Angie decided to go to the lake at the park. When they got there, they asked the activity
leader if they could use one of the rubber rafts. He said they could if they would pump it up. By the time they finished
inflating the raft, Michael and Angie were tired and thirsty, so they left the raft by the lake while they went to the snack
bar for a drink. As we they were walking back, they spotted a huge grey cat with its claws out getting ready to pounce
on the raft. They started running toward the raft, yelling at the cat. But, by the time they got there, it was too late.
They were looking at a rubber pancake.
Lenny’s Immediate Story Retell

Last summer, Michael and Angie went to the park with a raft to go rafting. But, they were not able to. No, they got too
tired whilst rafting, so they beached the raft to go to the snack store for snacks. But, they had come across a big, fat,
grey cat, who looked vicious. And decided to dodge the cat to then go back to the raft to find out that it turned into a
grey pancake. A grey rubber pancake.
Lenny’s Delayed Story Retell (30 mins later)

Michael and Jan… I’m going to say Gemma. Michael and Gemma went to the park last summer. This summer. Last
summer, with a raft, to go rafting. They went rafting. They went rafting and they got tired so they chose to go get, go
to the snack store to get a snack. So they left the raft beached, but on the way to the snack store, they found a cat,
ah, who was vicious, so they dodged the cat, went back to the raft and the raft was destroyed.
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Reading comprehension
• Involves understanding the meaning and
intent of a text.
• Requires the coordination of many cognitive
skills.
• Involves the student forming an integrated
and coherent representation of the overall
meaning, rather than literal wording alone.
• Requires instruction in its own right
• Is also the desired outcome of instruction in
other skills involved in reading.
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 Source: Five from Five.
(2024). Components of
reading
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comprehension. https://fiv
efromfive.com.au/compre
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<Add your department, faculty or division name here> reading-comprehension/
Tutorial task: Review one resource and report back to
the group on how it could work in your classroom
https://fivefromfive.com.au/comprehension/assessing-comprehension/
Curriculum-based measures

Motif: The Test of Everyday Reading https://www.motif.org.au/tests

Comprehension tests Standardised measure

Dialogic reading scholarly source https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0271121418821167

Dialogic reading (ECEC with TAs) professional https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/dialogic-

resource reading-having-conversation-about-books
Interactive reading guide (middle/high school) https://www.readingrockets.org/videos/classroom/using-interactive-
video reading-guide

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0040059915605799
Graphic organisers (high school) scholarly source

https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/comprehension/articles/question-
Question generation
generation-key-comprehension-strategy
https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/listen-
Listen-Read-Discuss
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Assessment support
Wk Topics and learning activity CLOs and Assessment

0 Getting Started, About Assessment

Unit introduction & fundamental concepts
1
Overview of the skills of a competent reader & writer
2 Introduction to reading and writing difficulties, including dyslexia & dysgraphia

3 Oral language and implications for reading & writing difficulties CLOs 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1
Relates to both
4 Phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness) and implications for reading & writing difficulties Assessment 1 and
Assessment 2
5 Sound letter knowledge (phonics) and orthography and implications for reading & writing difficulties

6 Vocabulary and implications for reading & writing difficulties

7 Fluency and Comprehension and implications for reading & writing difficulties
8 Content recap, Q&A tutorial - Assessment 1 drop-in. Assessment Item 1
Collaboration with other professionals including speech pathologists, guidance officers/counsellors, and psychologists
9
The Speech-to-Print Profile (Gillon, 2004) CLOs 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4,
3.1
10 Universal supports through Accessible Assessment & Accessible Pedagogies
Relates to both
Supplementary, Substantial, and Extensive Adjustments Assessment 1 and
11
Assistive technologies for reading and writing Assessment 2
12 Co-occurring diagnoses and reading & writing difficulties (ADHD, ASD, DLD, and others)
13 Content recap, Q&A tutorial - Assessment 2 drop-in. Assessment Item 2

EUN640: Understanding Reading & Writing Difficulties

References
Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Improving literacy in key stage 2: Develop fluent reading and writing skills
for seven – 11 year olds. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-
reports/literacy-ks2
Gathercole, S. E., Lamont, E., & Alloway, T. P. (2006). Working memory in the classroom. In S. J. Pickering (Ed.).
Working memory and education (pp. 219–240). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012554465-
8/50010-7
Nouwens, S., Groen, M. A., & Verhoeven, L. (2017). How working memory relates to children’s reading
comprehension: the importance of domain-specificity in storage and processing. Reading and Writing, 30, 105-
120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9665-5