Ruth

First Day: Response to article. **//__The Great Equalizer__//** 7/13/09 //Ruth Chamberlin//

//I am delighted to listen and read an article that promotes technology for children with special needs that includes Specific Learning Disability. Having had a particular interest in students with reading and written language difficulties, I have waited for technology to improve to a point where i t does not take a PHD or an incredible amount of time to “set up” the technology. For example, I have Dragon Speak available within the building and have tried to use Write Out Loud…, only to be discouraged with the programs slow response and also with the frustration of matching a child’s voice to a program. Finally, according to this article, technology is available for more students. I have also somewhat studied, but not had the opportunity within my school, to use assistive technology for severely impaired children. Within the special education system, I have found that children with the more severe – out there-obvious disabilities are EXPECTED to get assistive devices, however, a reading disability is not as “ out there” and/or obvious and therefore not a priority for assistive technology.// //The article also includes several sites to explore and try out – this is helpful information for personal use with my students as well as to share with classroom teachers.// //I also appreciate Peter McAlindon’s statement the “The area is getting very gray as to what is classified as an AT tool versus standard operating capability”. I have found that the frustration of “not being like everyone else within your peer group” is detrimental to the self-esteem of young children who have a desire to be just an ordinary kid. I like the idea that for once the Sp. Ed. child with a computer is “a cool kid”.// //Yes, some of this stuff goes a bit over board and would be most undesirable for many folks, however, for those in need  I think that it is valuable.//

 By: N. Mather and Sam Goldstein (2001) Second Day Reading Assignment 7/14/2009 Ruth Chamberlin

I have found that reading fluency activities are tons of fun. I use the Great Leaps Curriculum and the Fischer (1999) fluency drills at least 4 times each week with students from grade one to grade eight. Each child has a notebook that contains charts similar to those indicated within this article and each child is given a 10 minute period of time with me and/or a para to read single words, phrases, selected decodable text and/or literature that they may be reading within the classroom or the resource room. The students in grades 6-8 often read aloud and time each other. For the older students, I also include silent reading drills and charts. In the lower grades the para and the student read and record their progress. Most of the students (almost all of them) not only show continued progress with readin g fluency, but they delight in seeing their gains on charts. I usually require the student to read a 100 word passage at their independent reading level at least three times and record the progress. It is not unusual to see at least a 10 word gain with each successive reading....and then if they are real “go getters” they might ask to do it again. One caution is that the children must understand that this is not speed reading alone and that they are expected to use voice and inflection as they read...and to remember to breath. These techniques can also be employed for non-readers by using pictures, shapes and colors.

I also tape my own recordings for read-along (particularly when I know that I will be away). In this case, the reading is followed up with comprehension questions and fluency is not charted even though the child is following along....at my reading speed and voice inflection.

The progress charts made each day and over the course of a semester seem to give the slow, reluctant readers a big boost in self esteem as they see for themselves the improvement when they read a passage three times. On rare occasions they don’t make their personal goal...but cheerfully try the next day.

Another technique that was not mentioned in this article that I like to implement is reading a sentence or a paragraph into the tape recording and then listening. Young children delight in hearing their own voice...”Is that me?????” Sometimes they delight in experimenting with different kinds of voices (for ex. Squeaking or Lowering their tones) and then being delighted at what they hear when they play it back.

I have found that fluency drills are fun to do and I incorporate them within the last 10 minutes of the session....because the previous 50 minutes might have been pretty intense learning time and the fluency drills end the days work on a lighter note.

 Observations: Day 3 July 15, 2009 Ruth Chamberlin

The day three agenda was very enlightening. I thought that the presentation that Kate prepared on fluency and the accompanying articles both contained valuable information for the whole class. Some of us use these teaching strategies and assessment tools daily and for others the information presented was very new. We can all learn something from each other. There were pieces of information within the presentation and within the articles that were new approaches to enhance my prior learning and my experience with working with these materials. I particularly liked the Rasinski article and thought that it contained a lot of good, easy to implement fluency assessment suggestions. I frequently embed rubrics into the writing of IEP’s and will take that particular information and meld it into others that I have written for individual students. For “fluency practice” purposes….not for assessment purposes…I have the children read the __same__ text three times. If you are using the ORF for WCPM assessment purposes choosing three different texts within the same reading level is appropriate, however, I vary the procedure for practice purposes. I have found that the students enjoy knowing that with each reading, they gain anywhere from 3 to twenty or more words each time that they read the same passage. If they are reading from fiction passages, I give them the choice of what page that they want to read and to chart the results from. Sometimes they choose to read from chapter one…even when we are reading chapter 10 in class. ( They think that the words are easier in chapter one than they are in chapter 10 so that they will score a higher number of words per minute on their chart).

I found the smart board to be very intimidating. It has taken me a long time to be able to maneuver my way around the computer at a very elementary level and so the smart board seemed like more of a challenge than I wanted to take on today. I would need way more time and instruction with this tool….talk about frustration levels!!!!!!!

For the first time….I was able to successfully have 3 items working at the same time. 1. article, 2. text aloud and 3. I used