Written by Sandie Barrie Blackley, MA/CCC
Published on May 22, 2016
Blog Posts, Dyslexia Advice, Dyslexia and Schools, Dyslexia Facts, Dyslexia Treatment
Deep vs. Surface Instruction
Is your child getting deep or surface reading and spelling instruction? How can you tell and does it matter?
In the 1970s Marton and Säljö (1976) described two types of learning approaches based on clinical studies of students:
A student’s learning approach is not a personality trait; rather, it is produced by the interaction of the student with specific learning tasks.
Reading and Spelling Instruction
Students taught to read and spell with a “deep” approach would be expected to use a specific procedure to sound out and spell novel words, to explain spelling patterns and to correct errors.
Students taught to read and spell with a “shallow” approach would be expected to memorize words as whole units (“by sight” or as strings of letters), to use context to guess at words.
Reading and spelling instruction may use both “deep” and “shallow” types of instruction at different times. Students with dyslexia have difficulty with the “surface” approach and benefit greatly from a “deep” approach. This is the basis for structured literacy intervention, which has been shown to help struggling readers and spellers develop an understanding of how words work. Of course, teaching with a “deep” approach requires a teacher who has deep knowledge of word structure.
For example, a teacher with deep word structure knowledge will be able to answer these 10 questions:
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