Almost every teacher in the United States has at least one student who could fit the same description.  This situation leads many school personnel to wonder why their articulate, clearly bright student has so many problems with what appears to be a simple task – reading a text that everyone else seems to comprehend easily.

Having information about the likely explanation for and potential cause of the student's difficulties often relieves teachers' fears and uncertainties about how to teach the student and how to think about providing relevant and effective instruction.

The purpose of this article is to explain the answers to these questions and provide foundational knowledge that will lead to a firmer understanding of the underlying characteristics of students with dyslexia. A greater understanding of the current brain research and how it relates to students with dyslexia is important in education and will help teachers understand and evaluate possible instructional interventions to help their students succeed in the classroom. Our goal as a teacher is to provide students with dyslexia with some possible instructional interventions to help their students succeed in the classroom.

As a teacher here are some recommendations that we can use in our classrooms:

Faye Chandler-   "How To Use Music To Strengthen Neural Pathways And Optimize Your Brain Function"

 

     This video talks about a creative way in which music therapy is used to strengthen neural pathways to the brain. It also describes how using different sound frequencies can be used to strengthen the way the brain processes in various scenarios. In particular I think this video is relative to what we are learning about literacy acquisition and the brain because of the neurological pathways that must be strengthen when someone is learning to read. The video shares that since reading is an auditory based skill, using music therapy to help improve a student’s ability to process information can help with phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension (9:56-10:15).

I found this article helpful because 90% of my students are English language learners. In teaching phonemic awareness research suggests that ELLs respond well to meaningful activities such as language games and word walls, especially when the activities are consistent and focus on particular sounds and letters. Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are easily memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to ELLs (Hiebert, et al., 1998). Teaching phonics in ELLs to read in English, teachers can effectively teach phonics and all of the Reading First components if they are armed with knowledge about their students and their native language. Vocabulary development needs to be taught explicitly and be a part of the daily curriculum in addition to learning to read. This can be done through class time devoted strictly to English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Language Development (ELD). In teaching reading fluency there two instructional approaches have typically been used to teach reading fluency. One, guided repeated oral reading, encourages students to read passages out loud with systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from their teacher. The other, independent silent reading, encourages students to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with little guidance or feedback from their teachers. Lastly, in teaching reading comprehension, Teachers of ELLs must expose their students to quality literature and higher-order thinking skills. This can be done through the use of graphic organizers, modeling "thinking aloud," and stopping often in the text to question and summarize. With all of these strategies, we can better provide support to our students to become successful in their reading.

This is very helpful in my class because Phonological awareness skills are best taught in kindergarten and early Grade 1 so they can be applied to sounding out words as phonics instruction begins. These interventions that were discussed in this article are helpful to better help the students. The activities for teaching phonological awareness intervention are the same as teaching it to pre-readers, although children who need intervention may require much greater intensity of the instruction (e.g., smaller group size, more practice opportunities) to develop phonological awareness. For children who are old enough for formal reading instruction (i.e., kindergarten and up), phonological awareness instruction should generally be integrated with phonics instruction.

According to Read, "Learning to spell is not a matter of memorizing words, but a developmental process that culminates in a much greater understanding of English spelling than simple relationships between speech sounds and their graphic representations."

In my Pre-K classroom, this technique is very helpful because students are still learning how to read some basic words. An awareness of spelling development can help teachers plan instruction. For precommunicative and semiphonetic spellers, teachers may teach alphabet knowledge, letter-sound correspondences, the concept of "wordness," and left-to-right directionality. At the phonetic stage, students might be introduced, in the context of writing, to word families, spelling patterns, phonics, and word structures (Gentry, 1982). Also, students' invented spellings must be seen as opportunities for them to contribute actively to their own learning.

I found this article relevant to my class because 90% of my Pre-K students are ESL. This is their first time attending the school so most of them speak their language and I found myself lost especially at the beginning of the school year. I speak a different language which is Tagalog. The English language is my second language although most of our mode of instruction in my country, the Philippines is also in English. When it comes to this topic, I can relate to and use the strategies I have learned myself to communicate. This article has plenty of strategies that help me in my instruction such as reading to students daily; supporting their comprehension by pointing to the corresponding pictures while I read to them. A graphic organizer is also helpful to show visual illustrations that allow ELLs to better understand the material while learning important vocabulary.

Little to no interest in reading - I can support this student or students by asking them what they would like to see in reading assignments and perhaps create word problems with subject matters of interest

Inability to answer questions of what we read - I can create graphic organizers with 1-3 fill in sentences to support this scholar, encouraging them to answer questions in a way that helps them comprehend the reading

Challenges following basic instructions - I can be more explicit in my instruction.  This is also something that I desire to do more of.  I am not strong in providing explicit instructions because as a career change educator, I'm so accustomed to instructing adults.  Explicit instruction to adults can be viewed as condescending when providing too much detail.  As I am learning, the feeling of condescendence is not my responsibility.  My responsibility is to provide instruction in a way that is understood, completely.

Challenges summarizing what the word problem is about - As aforementioned, I would create graphic organizers to support this student with summarizing a word problem.  This is step 1 of 3 read close reading where the student is asked to identify what the word problem is about.  A graphic organizer would be helpful here.

The article states that by implementing these strategies, teachers can create a more inclusive and supportive environment that benefits all students in the classroom.