Rador Struggles

My classroom experience included: observing the classroom teacher leading group discussion (reviewing sight words, decoding words, and reading the weekly story), assisting students with reading worksheets (practice writing their letters and identifying beginning sounds of words), and reviewing the weekly story with each student. This particular teacher strictly uses a basal reader (Reading Streets) so I was very interested to observe her teaching using these particular materials. I have substituted in her classroom many times and have found it very hard to teach utilizing these lessons. Students’ often become restless and their eyes seem to gloss over because of boredom. I often thought that I must be doing something wrong when I am teaching the materials, but during observation I saw that the

After reading John Holt’s essay, How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading, I fully agree with what Holt is saying. He tells his audience that forcing children to read, use a dictionary and take quizzes on what they read has proven to deter children from enjoying reading. I liked reading it, I liked how he showed that he understood both sides of the situation, but then realized how important it was for children to just read. Even though they did not fully understand the material they still found parts of the readings that made them happy. I liked how Holt made the point about how embarrassed students would get when they had to read a difficult part in a book and classmates would snicker and giggle if they made a mistake. That is a real thing,

The student I worked with is in 5th grade. We did a DRA on a story called “Cry Foul”. This is a great assessment to assess a student’s reading ability in order to enhance his or her literacy achievement. I learned many things about my student that he likes to read adventurous books and books regarding sports. He wants to become a better reader by enhancing his understanding and vocabulary of the text. It’s also a bit difficult for him since English is his second language and a year ago he was taking ESL classes. It’s amazing that he has great goal settings that determines that he wants to become a better reader. The things that I observed about the student is that his oral reading is fluent since he had about three miscues in which one was

Setting: I observed this fourth grade student during his English Language Arts block for 45 minutes. The class consists of 22 fourth grade students in a student-centered classroom. During my observation, the students collaborated with other students while the teacher conducted a guided reading group. Students were on computers, writing and reading to respond in a journal. Three days a week this students is pulled out of the classroom for a 30 minute Fountas and Pinell Literacy Intervention due to the Tier 3 instructional level.

“Again, the predictability of reading for life success is so strong, that if you look at the proportion of middle schoolers who are not at the basic level, who are really behind in reading, it is a very strong predictor of problems with the law and the need for jails down the line.

Helping Children with Learning Disabilities Understand What They Read is an article by Regina G. Richards. Her article discusses the basic strategies and techniques that can be used for students with learning disabilities. The article states, a key component of comprehension is that the student must be actively

Beginning my elementary school career, I attended Indianapolis Public Schools. When I entered school, Kindergarten was only half days, and we were working on materials such as, learning our alphabet and counting to 100. The workload was a far cry from the addition, subtraction, early reading skills, and science that my daughter is learning in kindergarten this year. Following the first grade I left the Indianapolis Public School System and entered into a new school system. Embarking on second grade we started working on the skills that would help us read proficiently. I was absolutely struggling, but I was also so distrustful that I didn’t dare to say anything to my teacher. Thankfully, even without me saying anything to her, my teacher noticed

or need intervention. The teacher in the classroom will provide small group learning to help the student understand information if they are not meeting their academic goals.

In order for students to be actively engaged in school, they must be proficient readers and writers by third grade. After grade 3, instruction shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Students who, by the end of third grade are still struggling to read, may continue to have academic difficulties as they progress through future grades. These students become disengaged from learning. In Constante’s, interview with Wilm (Constante, 2011), Wilm suggests that in order to engage students in school, time is of the essence. “So the time consideration is this: there’s a certain amount of instructional time available in a school day. If you want to be sure you do not have 25 percent of students falling through the cracks by the end of Grade 3, you need to make sure these children are getting the instructional time they need. These students, the bottom 25 percent, need direct instruction in phonics. Some of them have good language skills, so once they learn to decode words, their reading skills develop quickly (Constante, 2011,). Other research suggests that below level readers need 100 to 150 hours of additional instruction in order to decrease the learning gap. Students can be disengaged for various reasons. Some students, who are proficient academically and socially, are just disinterested in school. Other disengaged students may have good behavior in the classroom, but they are low academically and require remediation of skills. Finally, some disengaged students have poor behavior because they have poor academic skills. Students who fall in the last category are students who require the most attention from teachers and administrators in school (Constante,

Research indicates that among students, poor readers evolve into poor thinkers, devoid of strategies to structure the writing assignments that contribute to academic success (Alfassi, 2004, p.1), and teachers who fail to model effective literacy strategies to their students, simply compound the problem. For educators attempting to meet the diverse range of learning needs, the ever increasing number of students with learning difficulties is overwhelming. The decisions regarding the types of interventions and the limited research on numerous strategies currently available are both misleading and confusing. However Walker, (2004) warn that reliance on untested methods and dependence on strategies that have limited evidence have resulted in unrealistic and unreasonable expectations for students. Significantly whilst there has been an exponential increase in research evidence collected around many popular interventions, there is very little

The central problem with this student was memory and cognition. Ever since his diagnosis, teachers did not assign the student any literature that was substantially long and so what was once a minor problem became very serious by the time he was in high school. When I tested his reading level, it was at a 4th grade level, which suggested to me that his previous teachers had simply decided to avoid challenging the student or pressing him to improve. What made this problem even more difficult for the student is that in his mind he had already given up and written himself off as being unable to read literature. This was not an acceptable way of thinking for his English teacher.

Elilah is a 14 year old ninth grade student at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk, CT who is in my Honors Principles of Biomedical Science class. Although I have only met Elilah four times for a total of 6 hours it has come to my attention that she struggles with comprehending written directions as well as oral directions. Twice I have sent her entire class off with both oral and written directions and Elilah is often sitting by herself without completing the assignment. I have approached her at least twice during both these sessions to help her. We read directions one on one, we define vocabulary together and then I ask her to repeat the objective which she still finds very challenging. When I am not with her I find her looking up words on the computer from the directions. (Examples: beneficiary, jealousy) She has not completed a Student Interest Survey; I give all students at the beginning of the year, so I have not seen any writing samples yet.

I approach by ask Drew to come in during lunch time and give him extra help on assignments and homework. Also, ask one of student who have good grade to sit next to him during the class and help him when he needs the help. If he has difficulty on understanding on the last chapter that class already finish learning, give him different assignments and help him catch up to the class. I will make communication with him after class to figure

Over the course of the semester, I have been fortunate enough to work with a student who is having difficulties when it comes to reading. My student does not have difficulties when it comes to hearing a word, but rather when he sees a word. My student has definitely benefited from one on one work with me as well as the additional help he’s getting from the reading specialist during their WIN (what I need) time. My student does not like to read because he knows that he is struggling and he is embarrassed about it. When my student goes to his WIN time, he does really well because the instruction is at his level and there are only two other students who are also on the same level there as well. Besides the current intervention, programs I would recommend are Direct Instruction: Reading Mastery, Letter Spacing, Wilson Reading System and the Lindamood program (LiPS).

As a Paraprofessional there were times when the teacher taught a math lesson that some students had difficulty comprehending the material. When I observed this, I would find alternative ways to solve the problem or explain it in another form. I have shown students that there are problems that can be solved in numerous ways. Problems may possess a pattern, special rules, and formulas that help to preserve memory. I currently work with a student who does not like math. I observed his actions, and noticed instead of attempting to do the math problem at the moment, he would write down the work and wait for the teacher to