Reading Process Discussion: Our class discussion reminded me once again that not all children have the same literacy experiences. Some children do not have exposure to books and do not have access to books and literacy. I have many fond memories of reading to my young children. The hours spent reading books on trucks and tractors. My children and I have a connection together to reading and it is a fun time for us. I have to realize that not all students have had the same experiences as my children. There are so many contributing factors to the reading process. We can not possibly know the background and experiences of all of students. For example are they hungry, tired etc.? These factors have a huge impact on the reading process.
Attention to task is an executive function that is so important to the reading process. I have so many students who have attention issues and executive functioning skill difficulty.
"decoding text is not reading" I found this very interesting. In the past three years I have received a lot of professional development around comprehension...and how important it is.
The "Why" of reading is very important for me. My husband often claims he doesn't like to read but its because he considered reading to be reading novels. He reads all the time but I guess he doesn't see his reading as reading: ATV and motor cycle manuals, the news online, the Chive etc. As a resource teacher I have met many young students this year who are having difficulty reading. I am hoping that these students will have access to AT in the very near future.
I love the point that Simon made about "at what point do we use AT?" In my experiences it is not until usually middle school that students are given the opportunity to receive AT from the school board in terms of learning disabilities. The Prisma app or Read Iris could have helped many of my students!
The videos we watched in class were quite amazing! There is so much involved for our bodies to complete simple tasks that I take for granted. Barbara reminded me of the importance of the repetition for our students. I do not think we do enough of this for students in school. Our brains our amazing....
Marilyn Jager Adams books is a book that I would highly recommend: She provided a great visual on what is involved in order to read.
Check out this video:
The Secret Life of the Brain Episode 2 by PBS. This video does a great way of outlining the struggles to read. The part in the video where it showed the teacher showing her class letters and they had to do an action reminded me of a program out that I use called Phoneme Touch and Say which has an action for every consonant and vowel. This program was developed by a Speech Language Pathologist who used to live in Berwick Nova Scotia.
iPads as instructional tools to enhance learning opportunities for students with developmental disabilities: An action research project by Therese M Cumming et al.
I found it interesting that study took place at a high school. Makes me wonder how many studies have taken place at the elementary level? This study found that using the iPads helped students to become ‘‘more independent learners.’’ This did not come to any surprise to me. We know that UDL is the best teaching method and that iPads are a great tool for UDL. Seems so simple but why is it not being done in all classrooms?
Hmmm... I think many students need assistive technology prior to junior high to enhance performance with reading...whether it be reading remediation AT or compensatory strategies. We want students to enjoy learning and acquiring new information via any modality. If we wait for junior high it might be too late. They are most likely already pretty frustrated with the learning process and shut down.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with you about some students requiring AT prior to middle school. I think it is obvious by grade 3 if a child is not successful with "traditional" methods of learning or showing what they know. I am excited to see the changes that will take place in my education system as teachers embrace AT and use it!
ReplyDeleteNatalie, I love that you brought up the relationship building that happens during the sharing of stories. As we learned through class on the reading process, being ready to engage in reading is one of the first steps. I think this is something that is modelled by many parents and shared with children through the sharing of reading. We often take this for granted, and sadly, as you mentioned, not all students come to school with this experience. Therefore, it is important to teach this step to our readers in school so that they can have the same successes as those students who develop a connection to reading/ sharing stories at home.
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