Week 7: Reading, Comprehension, and Helping Students With Learning Disabilities

Today's articles were very interesting to me because they drew upon my experiences not only as a teacher in training, but also as a student and how I have come to learn and comprehend things as I have.
First, the Applegate article about Profiles in Comprehension really made me analyze my learning in the past. It was a little disappointing for me to learn that I think that I am a mix between a Fuzzy Thinker and an Author because even though I can always respond to questions in a fairly confident manner and can give short descriptions of the reasoning behind my answer, I am unable to explain my true meaning because I am too overly worried about seeing all the perspectives so that I have reached an "intelligent" and well-rounded conclusion. For each of the Comprehension profiles I was able to remember that description by lableing them with one of my friends or family members that has that profile and it was very interesting for me to see the differences. Seeing these differences was very important because we are going to have to deal with many differences in comprehension styles in our future classroom someday and it is crucial that we do our best to accommodate all of them.
The Carlisle article about helping children with learning disabilities was also very important because it is something that I face everyday when I go to placement in my kindergarten classroom where the students have not yet been tested for learning disabilities (LD). The author points out certain strategies that a teacher should use in order to best accommodate this type of students. First, it is crucial that there is collaboration between the student's mainroom teacher, the other teachers that work with him, and also the students' parents. When there is teamwork with all these 3 parts working together, there is more likely to be success. Second, regularly assess the students with learning disabilities, as well as the other students in the class and try very hard not to single out the students with LDs. Also, it is very important to use a variety of activities and tasks with these children where they are given the maximum amount of exposure to reading, writing, speaking, and other skills. The author also suggested to have the students pair up for work or become involved with group work so that they are able to collaborate with the minds of their peers. In addition to the strategies that Carlisle pointed out, the Tompkins text was also very informative on explaining different activites that a teacher should use to have a lot of variety in the classroom. Tompkins also mentioned group and pair work several times and how it is important to have purposeful discussions as a class to benefit all students. It is important to give students the best well-rounded view of all literature in order for them to fully comprehend it.
Finally, for our lesson plan, Michael Holter and I (who are in the same kindergarten room at Gier Park) are planning our lesson around the book The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Our CT has helped us come up with multiple ideas to incorportate reading and writing into our lesson and will hopefuly gain suggestions from her to better our lesson plan for the final draft.