Homework creates anxiety, frustration and failure for untold numbers of children with learning disabilities. Conflict ensues among children, parents and teachers. Children's motivation for schoolwork plummets. Confidence disappears as resistance emerges.

This can take many forms, each destructive: feigned attention, thoughtless compliance, despondence, depression, restiveness, anger, disruptive behaviors. The list can go on, as can the pain.

The majority of these children suffer from serious reading difficulties, like dyslexia. A frequent instructional need of these struggling readers is learning to quickly, accurately and smoothly identify words. Simply put, if they can't quickly and accurately identify some 97 percent of words in their homework, frustration and failure are likely.

So, is there a way to assign 15 minutes of homework, four times a week, that can help strengthen struggling readers' word recognition, reading fluency, comprehension, motivation and sense of satisfaction?

No miracle solutions exist, but good solutions do. One, created by an eminent educational psychologist, Keith Topping of Scotland's University of Dundee, has considerable research support and is simple to use. It takes little time — perhaps two hours — for schools to educate, train and coach small groups of volunteer teachers and parents to use.

And at the risk of sounding like a snake-oil salesman on an infomercial, I'll make the bold claim that with quality preparation and collaboration, teachers and parents can begin to reverse many of the adverse consequences of "impossible-to-do" homework while helping many struggling readers begin strengthening their reading abilities, confidence and motivation for reading.

What's the name of this mysterious method that can replace frustrating and demoralizing homework? Paired reading.

The steps

Here's how Natalie Rathvon described paired reading:

"Paired reading is a simple, effective strategy that requires little training for parents and uses the student's regular classroom materials. During tutoring sessions, the parent and child begin reading aloud together and continue until the child makes an error. The parent supplies the correct word, the child repeats the word and rereads the sentence, and simultaneous ("duet") reading continues.

"When the child feels ready to read alone, he or she gives a prearranged signal [e.g., a thumb up], and the parent stops reading while the child continues. Paired reading improves word identification, fluency and comprehension for low-performing elementary grade readers, including students with ADHD, and is rated highly by parents and children alike. ... For best results, paired reading sessions should be conducted at least four times a week, whether at home or at school."

And here's how Marjorie Lipson and Karen Wixson described it:

"[The] child selects a book to be read. ... [The] child and adult read together until the child, using a prearranged signal (e.g., a nudge), indicates that he or she is ready to read alone ... The child reads independently until an error is made or a word is encountered that is not read correctly in 5 seconds. [The parent tells the child the word; the child repeats it. The child is not helped or asked to decide the word.] ... The adult immediately rejoins the child in reading together, [at the beginning of the sentence with the error.] ... Reading together continues until the child gives the signal again and the procedure is repeated or the session ends."

Additional steps

For many struggling readers, stronger comprehension, confidence and motivation are important goals of reading instruction, so parents might supplement paired reading with discussion and feedback. In emotionally supportive and encouraging ways, their feedback should emphasize their children's reasonable efforts and persistence.

Discussion. To engender interest, parents can ask a few open-ended questions about their child's thoughts, such as "Did you like the story? Why or why not? …. If you were Jake, what would you have done?" They might invite their children to ask questions. They should aim to make the discussion open-ended, opinion-seeking, interesting and satisfying for their children. This avoids anxiety that one-right-answer questions create.

Feedback. Parents' feedback that positively focuses on their children's positive behaviors can strengthen children's confidence and motivation. In all likelihood, struggling readers are painfully aware of their flaws and often expect criticism. Short, positive and visually descriptive feedback can counter this:

"Edwin, you made a good effort and didn't quit. When I told you the word, you looked at it, repeated it, and we started reading the sentence again. You smiled, focused on reading smoothly, and read well. You can be proud of your behavior."

Frequent feedback like this, identifying specific behaviors, can strengthen Edwin's belief in his abilities.

Important considerations

Paired reading homework should not begin unless parents volunteer to try it at home, receive sufficient preparation, believe they're ready to try it, and are a phone call away from help. In school, struggling readers should have had positive experiences with it.

It should also not begin until teachers eliminate other homework likely to frustrate struggling readers. Assigning such homework will undermine paired reading while strengthening the negative consequences of frustrating and demoralizing assignments.

For struggling readers who fear reading aloud, the first several weeks of paired reading homework should require only listening to and discussing books they choose in school. This can help them understand that they're viewed as intelligent people with important interests and preferences. It can also increase their interest, reduce anxiety and help parents and teachers better understand the children's current habits, anxieties, motivation, vocabulary and cognitive abilities.

When parents begin paired reading with these struggling readers, the ideal of 15-minutes of this homework should begin with shorter, 3-minute assignments. Gradually, assignments should be lengthened to match children's effort, cooperation, interest and success.

Books and other materials that struggling readers will use at home should be ones slightly above their independent reading level, ones in which they quickly and accurately recognize some 97 percent of words, but have to think a few seconds to recognize the other 3 percent. With such material, they can excel before their parents, which creates abundant opportunities for emotionally supportive feedback.

Paired reading homework is a joint venture between children, parents, teachers and schools. Initially, its success requires teachers and parents need to communicate frequently. They can quickly eliminate unforeseen problems by sharing simple progress monitoring check sheets.

For schools, paired reading doesn't cost a dime, save for good classroom libraries with a wide variety of reading materials at all levels of difficulty. And regardless of whether teachers use paired reading, quality reading programs require such libraries.

The bottom line

If done well, paired reading can help teachers, parents and struggling readers avoid many of the pitfalls of typical homework assignments. It can improve the reading abilities, confidence and motivation of struggling readers to do well in reading.

But, like all solutions, it works well with some but not all children. And, like all programs, schools must frequently and carefully monitor it,. If it's not succeeding, modify or replace it.

My general recommendation: Try it. It might work.