I have a student with a learning disability in my 5th grade classroom. He goes to Resource for Reading, but stays with me for everything else. I am looking for materials/ideas to help him, especially with his reading and spelling. He does reversals, and misspells words that he uses frequently, like dirt bike. I have heard that maybe a tracker would help him, or using different colored paper….I am willing to try anything! I am willing to buy the materials myself. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could try?
Re: Materials
Victoria is right; there are *some* folks who’ve got one piece missing from their reading puzzle, but most of them need (drum roll) instruction in reading.
Can you talk to his resource teacher and find out how they’re working on reading and/or spelling there?
You might pick three words a week that he’s responsible for spelling right for that week and forever - make it “dirt bike” and “America” this week (and have a piece of paper with the words on it so he can refer to it). The important thing isn’t how many words he learns, but that he learns them and applies that to his writing. Better still, make them words from what he’s learning in resource.
His reading is almost certainly far enough behind his thinking, so that it would *not* help his learning for him to “practice his reading skills” on material he’s also got to learn from. It would be pretty much like getting me to practice my piano by asking me to sight read some Stravinski. Hello, I’m still learning scales… A significantly bigger help is if you can spend some time with him… BUT… when it’s not making him look like the center of class attention… and read with him.. do the stuff Victoria said… and go over stuff orally and do things to help him realize how smart he is.
In general, I would try to emphasize his STRENGTHS in the regular classroom - and see what I could do to make sure that he was really learning and retaining the stuff *you* are teaching him.
Re: Materials
Stacy,
In addition to the remediation ideas that you’ve been given, it sounds as though you want to help him be successful with the curriculum TODAY in your classroom.
Is your classroom Mac-based or Windows based? Have your students learned to keyboard? One of the strategies that I have found very beneficial for students who present with a profile such as what you describe is to use features built into Microsoft Word when he is word processing written expression. For example, when there are spelling issues, the student can right click and choose from the list of correct spelling choices. Often times, students are very successful identifying the correct word. They are more likely to use grade level vocabulary and take risks in their writing when they use a word processor which allows mistakes, unlike paper and pencil. Another feature is to use the Language toolbar built into Word. This offers him text-to-speech so that he can listen to his work as he is editing it or listen to text that the rest of the class is reading easily.
These strategies are in addition to remediation. You want to remove the obstacles to curriculum access for this student today. There are more ideas but this is a good start.
Re: Materials
A couple more accommodations: be sure you have any required novels on tape or CD so he can listen to them. Also be sure he can read any work given in class to do. Let him dictate written assigments until he can keyboard. The lack of reading skills will really hold back his writing.
I think there are some accommodation fact sheets on the International Dyslexia Association site, if you like to read more: www.interdys.org.
Janis
Re: Materials
Some more ideas to make this student (and others in future years) be successful in the regular ed. classroom: computer programs such as Co-Writer are word prediction programs that allow the student to type in the first letter(s) and will then predict a list of 5 words that begin with that letter and make sense with what has come before. If your students do a lot of typing in school on reports and such this would be helpful.
Many textbook companies are now making their texts available on CD; I have bought sets of CD’s to go along with our new social studies texts that students may take home with them; it has been very beneficial for some of my students. If your school expects the special ed. students to also complete the regular ed. reading program to the best of their abilities, see if the reading selections are also available on CD; many/most of the programs within the last 10 years have these tapes/CD’s available as supplements. If your class reads more novels, purchase books on tape that go along with them. Even if this student is not in the classroom when you do reading instruction with the rest ofyour studens, they can either listen to it at a reading center within the room at another time or bring it home with them. They will be able to participate in discussions on the book, any projects you do that might go along with it, and will feel more like they are a part of their class.
Jenn
Gizmos and gadgets are of very limited use and frequently add another distractor, another excuse for not doing work.
He needs to learn to track forward, ie left to right, in his reading and writing. We sincerely hope the resource room teacher is teaching this; some are well-informed and do a good job of this, and some are not.
You can best help him by taking whatever time you have and have him read to you and/or you read to him while tracking the words and individual syllables with a pen point; also if you have time, sit with him for a while and make sure he is writing letters left-to-right and top-to-bottom (this is time consuming and hard for a classroom teacher to get tom but it is what he needs to straighten out.) He may resist change at first, a normal human attribute, but with time and patience you can get himm to see that the standard directions are easier and faster.