For Many Years, Teachers Have Worked To Make Their Students

Throughout a child’s life, he/she is faced with many obstacles. One of the biggest hurdles that they must overcome is learning to read. For some children, that task does not come easy. Children with learning disabilities struggle the most in school because they do not learn as quickly as children without learning disabilities. In an article by Kristin Stanberry and Lee Swanson called Effective Reading Interventions for Kids with Learning Disabilities, it discusses the different interventions that teachers can use to improve the learning capabilities of students with learning deficits. Throughout this essay, different topics will be discussed on how improve and increase word recognition skills will benefit a child with learning disabilities, different ways to improve reading comprehension skills, and personal viewpoints on how these different methods are effective.

All students need direct instruction of vocabulary, but it is especially imperative for ELLs. They need much more exposure to new vocabulary than their native-English-speaking classmates. ELLs need to learn cognates, prefixes, suffixes, and root words to enhance their ability to make sense of new lexicon. Beginning ELLs and more advanced ELL students should actively engage in holistic activities to practice new vocabulary because learning words out of context is difficult for these students. If they memorize the meanings of the words on a list, they will not be able to use the words in their own writing or verbal production until they really understand the meanings. When vocabulary instruction includes explicit, implicit, and strategy instruction, students are repeatedly exposed to the target vocabulary in a variety of contexts which increases their individual vocabulary development and the other resources that help in doing so is the Semantic Mapping primary focus on visual relationships, which is helpful to students from all backgrounds.

I gathered student written inventories and held personal interviews and conversations with students and their families in order to help my students grow and mature in their vocabulary usage. This information told me they value who they are and what motivates them so I could design innovative practices and utilize proven methods of vocabulary instruction that promote learning for all my students.

Reading, writing, and speaking is difficult for many people. In honest opinion, these subjects are hard for me. So, imagine the struggles for those students that have a learning disability and those who are learning English. Luckily, I attended a session at the LDA conference that promoted tips and strategies to help students with these subjects. Moreover, how to help both ELL students and students with learning disabilities access these curriculums. Session W32 by Linda Tilton showed me how to help students get organized and become active learners. Not only that, but how to give high interest review strategies to reinforce vocabulary, reading, and writing. As Linda stated, “These are the nuts and bolts to take back and use!” For example, she

Connor, R.. (2007). Teaching word recognition; Effective strategies for students with learning difficulties. New York: Guilford Press

Building vocabulary is an important task in the early grades. There has long been debate on how one should go about teaching vocabulary such as, it is better to teach a limited number of words fully and more intense or expose children to many words to enhance “incidental learning”. Research has proven that incorporating both into instruction is most effective. Read-aloud and teachers increase use of vocabulary have also been proven to help vocabulary and word knowledge. There are three tiers of words that children are presented in their life. Tier one words are those that they are most familiar with such as park, tier 2 are the increasingly hard words such as fortunate and finally the tier 3 words are words that students have rarely been exposed

Using a set of words will allow the teacher to give assessment throughout the week to determine which students are able to move to a new set of words, or requires more time on this set. By using groups of words, it also make it easy to send a list home with the students each week. If the teacher chooses to use pre-made card this will allow the use of a sentence containing the word, and also an opportunity to provide words for the students to choose form. This strategy will be beneficial for the special needs and ELL students, and yet still allow them to use the same card that the regular students are

Levy, B. A., Abello, B., & Lysynchuk, L. (1997). Transfer from word training to reading in context: Gains in reading fluency and comprehension. Learning Disability Quarterly, 20(3), 173-188.

Using technology, teachers can present and translate instructional materials in the students? native language. Students are allowed opportunities to increase verbal interaction, vocabulary development and enhancement of reading and writing skills. Keeping students engaged in a language-rich environment by allowing for communication among peers fosters collaborative learning among students. Computers provide opportunities for one-on-one learning to develop vocabulary skills in a context-rich environment that offers immediate feedback.

In chapter eight of their book, Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, Vacca et al. (2014, pp. 238-279) discuss “developing vocabulary and concepts” in the class room. The authors present numerous strategies throughout this chapter and real world examples of them in action in a classroom. This chapter contains a plethora of information that is invaluable to the classroom teacher who is preparing students to understand the challenging vocabulary words they will be reading over or tested on. While reading this chapter, I came across many concepts and terms that were familiar to me and a few that were new or surprising.

The demand to be literate in the 21st century extends into every discipline, and its meaning is expanding. Teachers must be prepared to scaffold instruction for those students who have continually exhibited academic difficulties, particularly in conceptual terminology and academic vocabulary, which may include differentiating content and process as well as product (Tomlinson, 2001).

The students were given 10 vocabulary words each week to learn. Along with the vocabulary words they were given an app on the iPad 2 that read stories and then asked reading comprehension questions. The students did this over the course of the 2nd semester, then the researchers compared the grades from the first semester. They found significant increases in the reading comprehension, but little to no increase in the vocabulary spelling. A few students had some gains in the vocabulary, but as a classroom

Alternative instruction to develop a students prerequisite skills also includes the use of modern technological resources. Many students will use a computer to assist with developing decoding, spelling, and phonic skills. The computer program, Lexia, which speaks prompts to the students as it guides them through a language arts program, is supplemented into the current curriculum. An advantage of this program is that it can be programmed to implement the same or similar content as the instructional materials used in the classroom. The Lexia program begins with a

much simpler for the students to publish their own work on the internet. When it comes to learning how to improve reading skills, many programs exist, one of the better being Reader Rabbit, which uses games to disguise drill-and-practice routines to help students improve reading ability. All of these are examples of how technology has positively affected Language Arts education.

Although vocabulary is the sub-skill of a language, it plays a very important role in language learning and teaching. In fact, vocabulary is central to language and is of paramount importance to language learners. On the other hand, words are the building blocks of a language that are used to label objects, actions, and ideas. In other words, people cannot convey the intended meaning without knowing vocabulary. It is widely accepted that vocabulary is a very important part in English language learning because no one can communicate in any meaningful way without vocabulary. As McCarthy (1990) stated, the single, biggest component of any language course is vocabulary. Nation (1990) also affirms that vocabulary can be considered as the most important element in language learning because Learners think that many of their