Inclusion

If a child is not reading, writing, etc. at grade level it is CRUEL to make them sit in the gen ed classroom and expect them to keep up. Then to add insult to injury, make them go to the pullout session and repeat what they should have gotten out of the regular class time. This reasoning is absolutely insane.

If they need your help (remediation) they need to be taken into YOUR resource room for reading DURING READING TIME not during another time of the day. Same goes for any subject.

I find it so hard to believe that professionals do not understand this.

Please spare your kids the stress and yourself the unnecessary “backtracking” and do it the appropriate way.

Most college professors of specialized reading graduate programs pound it into teachers to *not* pull during reading time. They do, however, advocate for book-on-tape so student can enjoy same literature w/classmates. Most teachers believe what these people tell them—that isn’t difficult to believe.

Now, I’m really on-the-fence about this. I believe that the special reading teacher can keep the student at grade-level with vocabulary and provide some time to listen to book on tape of current classroom selection. Some kids don’t wish to listen in the classroom—they want to go out to do this kind of work. I advocate for what keeps the child’s self-image more intact in this instance.

I truly believe that teachers want to do a good job but they have been led astray by pre-service and graduate professors who don’t know diddly about teaching reading. These people are disparaging about methods that work and push certain programs to the exclusion of others.

If you don’t buy into their *9$3##, it is difficult to survive the grad program. My ultimate goal is to change that. (One reason I admire Louisa Moats is that she openly discusses this huge issue in education.)

Sometimes we just have to do what is practical in our situations. In my school every single teacher, 1-6 teaches reading from 8:30-10:00. There is no way I can either: pull every child out then or not pull anyone out then. Then 5/6 grade levels teach math from about 10:15-11:15. I cannot pull-out then UNLESS the child has an IEP for math.

So, we have pragmatic concerns to contend with when we schedule. Lest anyone think that the whole school will schedule around my resource program they are very wrong. There are numerous factors that influence the way teachers schedule time, resource students are only one factor. So, I pull certain students out during langauge arts and some never get science/social studies because I pull them in the afternoon. Those tend to be students who are older, read closer to grade level and who need less phonological processing work and more work with comprehension and written language.

One size just does not fit all. Don’t forget there are other factors that are considered in making the schedule, like P.E. mandate re. state law.

I have been very fortunate (so far) to work in environments where the needs of students come before anything else and principals would see to it that schedules fit the smaller people, not just the larger ones in the building. I have not yet, however, worked a building where everyone taught a specific subject at a specific time. Having that flexibility made my job easier!

It would be nice if, because everybody’s teaching reading at the same time, there could be some creative grouping of students for level and teaching methods suiting those students. Of course, that’s no help if the “reading” teachers don’t know how to teach the LD kids effectively, or if the kiddo is especially needy.