Does anyone know of ANY books written specifically for teachers of students with disabilities who want to use reader’s workshop/writer’s workshop in their resource room? I have the General Educaiton books, just some things are not applicable to special education.
Thanks
You can use both. Here are a couple of texts for regular classroom. You just modify them for your own:
1. Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Poralupi
2. Reading Workshop Survival Kit by Gary Robert Muschla (Available from the Center for Applied Research)
Now, this being said, I would caution against Reading Workshop as your exclusive teaching tool except for those students who have great phonics and fluency skills but poor comprehension. Even then, my experience is the mini-lesson piece is not enough instruction for LD learners.
What I do like is having student-selected books and conferencing with them about their independent reading. I do a lot of this. I also have them journal a summary retelling and make some connections to their life or other stories.
Listen to book-on-tape of grade-level material and leading a literature circle (Harvey Daniels) can be a wonderful tool. These students are often reluctant to participate in the classroom and need more modeling before they are ready to do it with non-disabled peers. This is something I might do with a small LD group before the regular teacher does it in the classroom. My learners feel confident because they’ve already practiced.
Another book you might look at is “Wonderous Words” by Katie Wood Ray. I do a unit on “reading like a writer” with high-functioning LD students using picture books.