Reading Disabilities

Readings- IDEA stands for Individuals with Disabilites Education Improvement Act states that students K-12 must undergo a nondiscriminatory comrehensive educational evaluation, if the teacher detects a learning disablitiy. This comprehensive assessment should be a team evaluation not just the classroom teacher. The IDEA has identified thirteen different disabilites, the majority being mental retardation and speech impairment. This test measures a students IQ and academic achevement compared to the nation. The IDEA include the following basic reading skills, listening comprehension, oral expression, reading comprehension, written expression, math calculation and math reasoning. The NRP (National Reading Panel) includes basic reading skills, automatic word recognition and phonetic decoding skills. The standard score is 15 points to qualify between IQ and the measure of achevement. This is called the wait to fail method due to how young the students are and lack of academic experience they have. Some don't even administer it the same throughout the country. Students with dyslexia have trouble with the language. According to the IDA (Internationl Dyslexia Association), dyslexia is difficulties with accureate or fluent word recogniton and by poor spelling and decoding avilites. These difficulites typically result from a deficit in the phonological componet of language.It also may include reading comprehension and lack of vocabulary and background knowlegde. Therefore, these students need more in depth assessments. The RTI (Response to Intervention) is used by the 3 tiered model of intervention among stuggling students to fail to make aduequte progress. If this still doesn't work then other tests can be adminstered, like the adaptive behavior. This is the abiltiy to funciton independently in a classroom enviorment.
SLAAP stands for Second Language Acquisition-Associated Phenomena can have low test scores, but may not be dyslexic.
Connection-Being a 2nd grade teacher , this is right up my alley. I taught 1st grade last year, and my principal wanted my to move up with my students. Why? because I am good at child process, therefore I could get the kids idetifed faster. Out of 22 students this is my lovely group: 3 dyslexic, 4 ADHD, 2 axienty, 2 spec ed. and the rest are of course on grade level. WRONG!!! It is so hard to teach a math group of 17 when half of the class needs to be retaught or in a small group. Not of 17. Knowing that they need all these extra interventions it totally defeats the purpose of small group or one on one because almost all of them need it. Since I have some spec ed, dyslexic, and possible prospects I have to determine their progress alone. It is supposed to be with a committee, but they are so busy with TAKS grades we are just chop liver. I have to come up with the stratgies alone, with the help with one other teacher if they have time. It bums me out cause I know we can be doing so much more for kids. We don't because we are LOW economic school, no parent support, so they are pushing to find either a disabitliy, retention, placement, or on grade level. Nothing else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Models

I thought it was intresting learning about all the different models of reading development. The top three that stood out in my mind were the Rosenblatt's, Sternberg's, and Frith' s development model. I totally understood and agreed strongly with Rosenblatt's theory. I truly feel kids are all different and come from different backgrounds. They each bring something unique and different to the table. Because of this they may interpret the text differently. My students were reading a story about a little dinosaur that was being teased by his older sister because he was not brave enough. When I asked my students, "How do you think the little dinosaur felt?" Most of there answers were the same, SAD. One perticlar student told me the little dinosaur probably felt embarassed, and ashamed of himself. Come to find out my student gets teased outside of school. He really connected with this character because he could relate to him.

Chapter 1

The three tier intervention model gives me a clear understanding of how interventions should be used in the schools. I'm a visual learner, so that is easy to see. It does make me a little embrassed of my school because I feel we could do a lot more with our students. We have so many of our kids at- risk and it is really hard to get one on one tutoring or a small ratio. We implement the SFA reading program at our school and strongly disagree with some of their "rules". In leveled reading it is supposed to be used as a useful intervention, but with the SFA program I actually see it hurting some kids. Like last year my fifth grade student "George" was in my first grade reading class. The younger kids would always ask him, "How come you can't read or why is he so big?"and he would get so angry. That can't be healthy for poor George when he gets to middle school he would be stuck in a regular reading class where he would be expected to adapt to his new "leveled" peers. That makes me so mad!!!