I'm sitting in my office writing this on Friday afternoon. I spent the morning at the Capitol, hoping to get in to see my legislators but at 8:15, the building was full to capacity with teachers from all over the state. And even in the cold and drizzle, they just came coming all morning. I tried to find people I knew, and hung out with a friend and former student as well as teachers from Jefferson Elementary School here in Norman (the school I go to on Fridays). You all who are there (and those who can't be), you are supported! I hope you all hang in there until they do their job and fund education!
This week is focusing on meeting the needs of diverse learners as a reading specialist. Those diverse learners include special needs students, linguistically and culturally different students and English language learners. What do you hope to learn about how a reading specialist meets the needs of these students? What do you see happening in your own schools?
Everyone this week will read WSQ 14 which discusses Response to Intervention. Do you have RTI in your setting? How is what you have similar to or different from the information in the chapter? Think about discussing one of the reflection questions at the end of the chapter.
Divide up the other 4 chapters, so each of you will read only 1 other chapter. Each of you will have to summarize the key points of your chapter for the rest of the members of your group. Make comparisons and connections across the four chapters. How does what you read fit in with RTI as a way of supporting the learning needs of diverse children?
Remember that you need to complete the Virtual Check In by Wednesday evening, please, so I can get back to you with answers to questions. Set up a small group meeting to brainstorm and review each other's Task 3 beginnings as well as Task 2 revisions. I'm glad to participate via Canvas or Google Hangouts if you invite me. Tuesday evenings are the only time I"m unavailable as I teach then. Task 2 final drafts are due to Canvas by 11 pm on April 14.
Stay strong! I think support for teachers is strong. I'm with you in spirit and will try to make it to the Capitol again at least once more if I can.
I hope to learn how to meet the needs of students with more specific needs, such as readers with dyslexia. I feel like I have a good understanding of general differentiation strategies and how to apply them in intervention, however I would like to add to my toolkit interventions for specific needs.
ReplyDeleteI also hope to learn more about working with linguistically and culturally different students. While I do have many strategies in my toolkit from my experiences with students in my class over the years and from courses in this program, I feel one can never have enough! Often, these strategies are ones that work well with my other struggling readers as well.
As for what I see in my own schools, I feel like I mostly see he more general differentiation strategies being used in general education classrooms. However, our ELL teacher and bilingual aid have extensive knowledge in this area. I often see them using strategies that apply to the specific needs of the students they work with. I am sure the reading specialist does as well, but unfortunately I have not gotten the chance to observe her during her intervention times and due to class sizes this year we have had to resort to using her push in time for her to conduct a fourth center group to lessen group sizes.
I am very interested to learn about how reading specialists works in conjunction with special education teachers to meet the needs of students. I am curious about who how responsibilities are divided between these two teachers, and what this instruction looks like. Does the student see each teacher individually or at the same time? I am not surprised that reading specialists work with ELL students and linguistically diverse students, but I hadn’t thought about reading specialists working with culturally diverse students. ELL and linguistically diverse students are usually at a disadvantage in regards to vocabulary, so I am interested in learning about effective vocabulary strategies to help these students close the gap.
ReplyDeleteIn my school, our reading specialist works with students who are struggling readers based on DIBELS scores and other assessments, usually our ELL students fall into this group along with students who have English as their first language. Sadly, we do not currently have a designated ELL teacher. We have had one in the past. Right now, our reading specialists work with these younger ELL students. I do not think there is much overlap between our reading specialists and our special education services, at least in the upper grades. They seem to work separately, but I do not know for sure. Since our reading specialists mainly work with lower grades (K-3rd), I do not have a lot of interaction with them besides the occasional consultation for 5th or 6th graders. These questions are making me realize that I need to go down and visit with them so that I am better informed!
Thank you for your support Dr. Beach. I do not think we realized the exhaustion that was going to come from advocating in this manner, but what a wonderful way and reason to be exhausted! :)
ReplyDeleteWe have RTI in my school, so I am excited to see what the readings have to say. We have pullout and push in groups in place for RTI, depending on student needs and classroom opportunities.
As far as meeting the needs of different students I am very interested to know better strategies and ideas. I feel that many of these strategies work well with all learners, so anything to add to my teacher kit will help. I have special needs students in my classroom, but I have a very limited population of culturally and linguistically diverse students this year (only 1-from India), other than my ELL tutor kiddos. However, I do see that this is changing for my school. We are growing and have a greater Hispanic population coming up through the grades. Because I'm not involved with the lower grades, I am unsure what they are doing. I will be asking though. This week I am hoping to learn more ways to tap into the cultural differences of all my students.
Jenny really summed up exactly what I am hoping to learn; how the reading specialist can work in conjunction with the SPED and ELL teachers. In my building all 3 of these roles operate independently with no collaboration what so ever. Our reading specialist works only with the lowest readers that are identified by the Fontas and Pinnell assessments. The reading specialist specifically looks for the students who are not identified as ELL or SPED since those students are receiving support from other teachers. I understand this but still feel that these three teachers have a lot that they could offer to one another and the students. As I look to take the role of the SPED teacher for next year, I would like to have ideas in place of how I could try to foster collaboration between the 3 of us and what that collaboration could/should look like.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your support Dr. Beach! I think I've spied someone from our class each day! It's such an exciting time for education in Oklahoma. I've never been so proud to be one of the many strong, dedicated teachers in our state!
ReplyDeleteMy hope this week is to learn more about how to best reach students who are ELL. We use STAR reading as a means to identify and provide service to our struggling readers. ELL students seem to always be among those who are identified as needing intervention. Clearly, this is an area of need at our school but we do not have a ELL specialist. Our SPED teachers only sees them to assess them for other learning disabilities and our reading interventionist is neither Spanish speaking nor trained to serve english language learners. I know I certainly feel lost as to how to best serve these babies.
At our school we have a part time reading specialist and an ELL teacher. The reading specialist works with special needs students and struggling readers in grades k-2nd. Our special education teacher works with special needs students and struggling readers in grades 3rd-5th. The ELL teacher meets with students who are learning English. We have an Indian ed tutor who works with Native American students per the parent’s requests. Since the special needs teacher doesn’t have a background in reading, I am always puzzled by the idea of her working with students that just have reading difficulties. She tries to communicate with teachers often but there is little collaboration if any at all between the reading specialist, sped teacher and ELL teacher, so I am interested in reading more about how teachers in these roles work together to best meet the needs of the students.
ReplyDeleteAt my school we have a full time reading specialist, full time ELL teacher, and part time Indian Ed teacher. Therefore the ELL teacher sees the students who are ELL and the Indian Ed teacher sees most of our Native American students. Our reading specialist does see some students who recieve special education, however, depending on the severity of the problem- our special education lab teachers often address this in their classrooms instead. Like Jame mentioned above, I have always been a little confused as to why many of our students on IEPs with reading goals do not see the reading specialist- the person with the most training in that area in the building. A reading specialist once told me, (in not so many words), that this was because students with special needs typically made very little progress, therefore the reading specialist reserved more of her time with students who have average IQs or are not quite as delayed as many special education students are. I am curious to learn if this is true. It's surprising to me that so many schools do not have Indian Ed or ELL teachers, so I'm also curious to learn more about how reading specialists in schools without these educators go about instruction with these students.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your support this week with the teacher walkout! It has been very exhausting and defeating while talking to legislators with opposing opinions. However, seeing the community come together is very motivating and reassuring that we are doing was is best for our students, despite the number of cancelled school days.
ReplyDeleteThis week, I hope to read about specific approaches that have been successful when working with students of diverse needs in literacy, like strategies or things to be mindful of when working with students that speak little English or those that have special needs. I would also like to read about how to assist and support students who struggle with dyslexia. Many families approach me and ask if I believe their student has dyslexia. I've have yet to encounter a student that has been diagnosed with this learning disability and would like to know how to identify it. I would also like to learn how to help these students be successful.
As I have mentioned previously, the reading specialist at my school has done the bare minimum of her position at my school. Therefore, I have yet to observe first-hand quality characteristics of an effective reading specialist. However, the ELL teacher at my school is phenomenal with her ELL students. She immerses them in vocabulary and oral language, while keeping a lively and engaging environment. She uses a lot of visual aids, discussion, and hands-on activities. The kids love visiting her for lessons!
In my school we currently have two ELL teachers and two reading specialists. The reading specialists split the grades so one of them pulls younger and one pulls older. Some of my ELL students get pulled by both teachers but two do not fall into the correct tier.
ReplyDeleteI hope through the reading to learn more about how the reading specialist and the special education teachers work together to help our students, or if they typically do at all. In my school it doesn’t seem that way, so I would like to learn more about if it should.
I would also like to see how the reading specialists works with students with dyslexia and processing delays. Parents have approached me asking about it and I’m so unfamiliar with it that I have little advice for them.
Thank you for your support Dr. Beach :) This walkout is not easy so it's nice to hear that from you!
ReplyDeleteI hope to learn how reading specialists bond and tailor their lessons to specifically meet the needs of ELL students. A lot of what I read has been vague and general so I am hoping to read a few examples to see how working with ELL's in a reading specialist position works in the real world. I am also curious to see if they talk about how the general ed and reading specialist would work together to help ELL's.
I love the RTI process. My school will classify different children on the different tiers but honestly that's where the process ends at our school. Not much is done with them and it's put heavily on the general ed teachers plate.
ReplyDeleteI hope to learn what reading specialists do to meet the needs of diverse learners. I do not have a reading specialist in my building. In my school, we have an ELL teacher who meets with kindergarten through 3rd graders in pull out sessions. We also have our special education teachers - one who is half day. I would like to learn what I could take back to share with our ELL and special education teachers. It is mainly the responsibility of the classroom teachers to meet the needs of diverse learners. I would like to learn how reading specialists meet the needs of those ELL students who are beyond 3rd grade. I would like to learn which aspects of reading specialists responsibilities in dealing with diverse learners could I share with classroom teachers who may not be reading specialists experts and may not have any specialists in their building, but are still responsible for meeting the needs of diverse learners that we all have in our classrooms.