Case study: An Examination of the Combined Effects of the Neurological Impress Method and Repeated Reading on a Severely Disabled Middle School Reader

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of the Neurological Impress Method, combined with the Method of Repeated Readings, on a severely impaired middle school reader. These methods were chosen due to the instructor's needs to find techniques which might help students who have reached the upper grades as unsuccessful readers, and are therefore more resistant to instruction due to prolonged failure. The Neurological Impress Method was chosen as the primary technique to be used in the study because of the ability to give the student the feeling of success almost immediately. It seemed to be a very natural way to improve the student's reading experiences, and the student in this study showed immediate improvement in willingness to participate in reading instruction. The Method of Repeated Reading was added as a solution to the student's on-going resistance to reading homework. He was given the choice of taking home a copy of the day's reading to do instead of what he had been doing, and his mother was given the guidelines for implementing neurological impress with him. I felt that this would provide additional improved self-esteem, since he would be experiencing the same success at home with perhaps more due to having had exposure to the material already that day. After studying additional research of repeated reading, I had planned to further implement it by adding more repetition, however the student was very resistive so this was not done. However, he did begin to select books on his own that he had read several years earlier with his mother, which seemed to be his own twist on the method. As expected, due to the severity of this student's disabilities and neurological complications, there were minimal measurable gains in fluency. However there were certainly quite observable changes in this student's affect toward reading instruction at school and his willingness to encounter reading experiences throughout his life. His mother and I were both very pleased to encounter far less resistance to the task of reading, and observed him to begin to attempt things that involved reading more readily on his own. This I would attribute primarily to the Neurological Impress Method, and would certainly recommend it as a means to approach the resistant middle school disabled reader.