Dayna's+Technology+Assignment

This is the article that I read for the TEP 548 Tech Assignment. It is entitled "Teaching Reading to Students with Learning Difficulties".

[] [|[delete]]

This was such a great article about assessment and data. The article talked about how important it was to assess individual students so that you could evaluate a student's individual needs based on their reading difficulty.
 * Step 2. Based on what you have learned, identify some common diagnostic and assessment strategies you might use with this special needs population. Discuss these diagnostic strategies in the Course wiki and respond to other classmates’ discussions as well.**

The article made me realize that students with learning disabilities might have a hard time management because it takes them longer to read and understand what is being asked of them. If a teacher acknowledges that a student has a learning disability, then the teacher can accommodate the student with more time for them to finish assignments, possibly allowing the student to finish a reading assignment for homework.

This article also dove in to how to assess if a student has a reading disability. It is important to evaluate student work and and see how it progresses over a period of time. If a student shows consistent difficulty with reading, it is important that a teacher finds the right resources to help the child improve their reading and comprehension skills.

__**• Content Knowledge Question: Describe what you learned about diagnostic and assessment strategies that fit your target population.**__ __**(Write a minimum of 50 words for this question.) (CK)**__ The journal article that I read was called "Teaching Reading to Students with Learning Difficulties". I learned that it is really important to evaluate the student's individual learning needs in order to best help them. Just because 2 students can't read doesn't mean they have the same problem. The article talked about why it is important to monitor the student's work and keep track of it over a period of time in order to evaluate the student's progress. Therefore, it is important to utilize a variety of diagnostic and assessment strategies for students with reading difficulties.

When assessing a student's reading disability, it is important to remember the solution to the problem wasn't to hold a student back a year and have them repeat the grade. Keeping a student back a year without any intervention plan is not an effective method of teaching. I learned how important it is to actually figure out what the student is specifically struggling with (ie. reading, reading comprehension, writing, etc.) in order to move forward. Taking advantage of whatever kind of state implemented improvement programs are also a great resource, although, I am personally skeptical of the programs due to lack of funding and just simple lack of resources.

After the reading disability has been targeted, the article suggested some specific assessment and diagnostic strategies specifically for student's with reading disabilities such as pre-reading tasks, developing vocabulary, and phonetic skill builidng. More specifically, games that highiight word recognition such as word bingo, flashcards, word hunts, word walls are suggestsed to be effective diagnostic and assesment strategies that formulate how well the student with reading difficulties is comprehending.

__**• Pedagogical Knowledge Question: Describe in what way/s assessment data would determine how you planned your curriculum and lessons for the specific special needs population? (Write a minimum of 50 words for this question.) (PK)**__ Assessment data would greatly determine how I planned my curriculum and lessons for students with reading difficulties by allowing me to gage if I could move on to a new lesson or if I need to spend more time reviewing the current lesson. For example, if I had students read a story, and at the end of every chapter I gave them a reading comprehension quiz and they did poorly, I would need to back up and reevaluate how I could help students understand the story and improve their actual reading skills through vocabulary drills. I can't expect my students to read a story if they don't know how to read. Therefore, the assessments would show me that I need to back up and spend more time on fundamentals.

The data from various assessments would also be important for me to examine for individual students. If the assessments show that the majority of the class is comprehending the reading assignments, but one student is not, I can take that assessment data and hopefully target the need of that individual and implement a learning plan that will best fit their learning need. This could mean that I need to specifically work with this student on reading skills, or I find resources and people who can help as well. Assessment data could impact my curriculum and lessons could be through integrating cross-curricular activities. For example, I teacher history, and if I am noticing that students aren't comprehending the readings from the text book, I might need to communicate and figure out how to work together with the English teacher on this matter. This article and technology assignment made me realize how important it is to constantly be assessing students and retrieve data about students so that you can figure out where they are on the learning curve and if new teaching strategies need to be performed or if a lesson as a whole did not go over well.