ESL » Special Education and Learning Differences

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It

Nov 102009

Emergent Readers and Struggling Readers Have Fun Learning and Discover Reading Success

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It is an engaging game, made in two levels, that helps emerging readers and struggling readers become familiar with words that follow a consonant-vowel-consonant (c-v-c) pattern. The reproducible worksheets binder can be used in conjunction with the board game, as a stand-alone program or supplement to another reading program. Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It Software offers picture representations of words as well as words without pictures for visual learners and students with developmental disabilities to reinforce the foundation and skills needed to begin reading and strengthen the reading skill process.

Playing the interactive board game or software game helps struggling learners develop phonological awareness. Students begin to understand individual sounds apart from words, how sounds form words, how words begin and end, and how to recognize parts and patterns of words. Once students recognize the parts and patterns of words and associate them with the letters of the alphabet, they begin to equate sounds with symbols. This is the beginning of reading. By playing these games, students improve their phonological awareness and learn to recognize, identify, spell, and rhyme c-v-c words with the most common letter patterns.

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It 1 & 2 both consist of a game board and 150 draw cards. The game board features 28 squares. Each square has an icon to represent one of the possible tasks to complete during the game. As a student lands on a square, he or she selects a draw card from the appropriate stack and completes the designated task: saying a word, rhyming a word, or spelling a word. Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It 2 progresses in difficulty from the first board game by using c-v-c-c and c-c-v-c short vowel word patterns.

Say It, Rhyme It, Spell It is appropriate for a wide variety of classrooms, including specialized reading programs, language arts, resource, inclusive, and ESL classrooms. These easy-to-play games help students learn to read c-v-c, c-v-c-c and c-c-v-c short vowel word pattern words and establish the foundation or reinforcement of reading skills for emergent readers, struggling readers, and students with specials needs and learning differences.

To encourage parental involvement and reinforcement of emerging reading skills at home, reproducible activities and a parent letter are included. These take-home activities provide an easy way for students to practice saying, rhyming, and spelling words.

Product Developed and Authored by Rosie Simms

Character Education, Lasting Effects

Special Education Classroom No Responses »

Oct 022009

A Curriculum That Builds Character and Reading Comprehension Skills

Character education has long been a shared responsibility of parents, teachers and members of the community throughout history. It is a learning process that should be exemplified in a school community to help students understand, care about and act on such core ethical values as respect, justice, civic virtue and citizenship, and responsibility for self and others. These core values serve as the foundation of our society.

Whether a student has learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, or special needs, developing a strong character is essential to everyone. It affects developing good behavior skills and social skills as well. Because students spend much of their day in classrooms, teachers have an opportunity to explain and reinforce core values upon which character is formed.

Character education must be approached comprehensively to include the emotional, intellectual and moral qualities of a person or group. We must offer multiple opportunities for students to learn about, discuss and enact positive social behaviors so that being a person of strong character becomes a part of a student’s beliefs and actions. We must practice character for it to have a lasting effect.

PCI Education has designed a curriculum that provides diverse activities to develop character, practice positive behavior skills, and build reading comprehension called Bugg Books. These books infuse important life skills into engaging tales and entice struggling readers. As the main characters in each book work through everyday situations, they learn the value of good citizenship and having a strong character. The Bugg Books character lessons include:

• getting along with others
• learning to share
• practice makes perfect
• dealing with bullies
• respecting others
• sticking to the truth
• facing your fears
• paying attention
• doing your best
• consequences of stealing
• the trouble with tattling
• believing in yourself
• controlling your anger

Teaching character education along with reading comprehension skills is easy with the Bugg Books. The curriculum features two distinct lessons and exercises for each of the books in the series. The first lesson focuses on reading comprehension. The second lesson focuses on the character education lesson of the book with a wide variety of activities to specifically engage students in the lesson, extend it to their own everyday situations, and make personal connections. The curriculum also includes activities that families can do at home to reinforce each lesson.

Students with special needs, learning differences, or developmental disabilities can also evolve in character education, understand social values and learn positive behavior skills. It is vitally important we instill core values in all our children so they, too, can embody and teach the next generation a strong sense of character, values, and citizenship.

Within the character of the citizen lies the welfare of the nation. — Cicero

Getting the Words Right

Teaching Tips 1 Response »

Aug 242009

Vocabulary Tactics in an Inclusive Classroom by Kristina Swann

We know that learning vocabulary is an essential first step to learning anything. Obviously, students must learn vocabulary while learning to read, but they must also learn vocabulary for every subject they study. Each subject comes with its own vernacular. Without basic knowledge of the vocabulary of a topic, understanding the subject would be hard at best, but vocabulary can be especially challenging for special needs children and students with autism or those with learning differences.

In today’s inclusiveclassrooms, vocabulary development is more important than ever before. There is a growing number of students with learning differences and special needs challenges and students who are English language learners.

These are some things I used while teaching and reinforcing vocabulary in my inclusive classroom:

• Use multiple methods of review and reinforcement of terms. Students can match terms to definitions, sort terms into categories, or identify the correct term from a list of choices.

• Practice vocabulary in a fun way. For example, play vocabulary bingo with your students. You can also turn reviews into a rhyming game or a sing-along. Depending on the age of your students, they could even be engaged to make their own song or rap to remember the words.

• Make vocabulary visual. Put up a word wall. Students will be able to see the vocabulary words every day when they walk into the classroom. If you have a few extra minutes between lessons or at the end of a class, call on volunteers to define words from the word wall or put them in sentences. Reward students for answering correctly.

• Use technology. Instructional software programs are a fantastic way to provide extra practice to students who need it most.

• Use the words. Once you have taught students a vocabulary word, use it. For example, if you have taught students the word “subtract,” don’t use the phrase “take away” anymore when teaching about subtraction. Say “subtract” every time you address the topic.

• Get students to own their vocabulary words. Have students make up definitions in their own words. Have them write words in sentences and draw pictures to represent the words and their definitions. Letting students take control of the words while they are learning them allows students to keep those words with them for the long term.

Reading & Writing Success in Small Steps

Teaching Tips 1 Response »

Jul 012009

Using Word Families to Build Confidence in Struggling Readers

Many struggling readers feel successful when they can apply their knowledge of words and word parts they do know to read other unknown words. Word families help students recognize unknown words by using word-structure patterns or phonograms. Short-vowel pattern families like –am, –in, or –up can especially help struggling readers gain confidence and a solid word foundation that they can carry over to writing skills and other subjects.

The following activities are designed to help those with learning differences read and write words in word families. These exercises will also reinforce comprehension and students’ confidence that they can apply this reading skill to many areas of learning.

Blending Words. Choose a word pattern to focus on. Write the word pattern, like –an, five or six times in a column on the board, leaving a blank in front of the pattern. Introduce the pattern then ask students to read the pattern. After writing letters in the spaces to make words, ask students to identify the sound the letter or letters make preceding the pattern of the first word. Say the beginning sound together and then blend it into the pattern using your finger to underline the letters as you blend the sounds together to read the word. Finally, read the word and have the students repeat the word.

Making Words in the Word Family. Choose a word pattern and word, then write the word pattern on five index cards in one color. On another set of index cards, write the beginning letter or letters for each word in a different color. Have students match the different cards to make all of the words in the word family. When all of the words have been made, ask the students read them out loud.

Finding Word Family Words. Choose a word pattern and write it on the board. Have students brainstorm a list of words that are a part of the word family and write them on the board. Then give students a newspaper, magazine, and junk mail. Ask them look through the texts and cut out words that belong in the word family. After the activity, have students share the words they found. Explain that they can read these unknown words because they can read the short-vowel pattern in the word family by sounding out the sounds of the beginning letters.

Success in small steps gives struggling readers and students with learning differences confidence in themselves and their ability to learn. This confidence builds a foundation to grow other life skills essential to becoming successful young adults.

Bolster Reading Comprehension

Teaching Tips No Responses »

Jun 022009

Drawing Conclusions to Enhance Reading Comprehension for Struggling Learners

littleboynewspaper Reading comprehension is an essential life skill. Drawing conclusions about a story requires students to understand what they are reading and then use clues, hints, assumptions, and prior experiences. For struggling readers and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners, drawing conclusions can be a difficult skill to develop. Just understanding the words in the story is a challenge for many of these students.

When I taught elementary struggling and ESL students, I developed several interactive activities and strategies that helped students develop the skill of drawing conclusions. These can also be used to help special ed students, students with autism, and those with mild cognitive disabilities.

Here are some activities you may find helpful and can modify to your students’ ability level:

1. Listen and Draw: Read a picture book to students. Wrap the cover so students cannot see any pictures and do not show the pictures to the students as you read the story. After reading, have the students draw a picture of what they think the main character or characters look like. Students must decide if the character is an animal or person, boy or girl, young or old, and what the character looks like. Then, have students explain their illustrations. Show students the cover and illustrations and compare students’ drawings.

2. Packing the Clues: Pack three small suitcases with items that can be worn or used to swim, play in the snow, and camp in the woods. Open and display one suitcase’s contents at a time. Ask students to conclude what the items in each suitcase are for and where someone would go with them. Have students share personal experiences that helped them draw their conclusions.

3. Five Questions: Have each student choose an animal for the activity. One student answers five yes-or-no questions from the other students about his or her animal. For example, “Does your animal have fur?” or “Does it walk on four legs?” or “Does your animal live in the water?” Students will use the hints to draw conclusions and identify the animal. When students correctly identify the animal, another student takes a turn.

For more activities and practice sheets on drawing conclusions, see my Basic Reading Series and Reading Comprehension Cards published by PCI. These activities are appropriate for introducing and reviewing how to draw conclusions and other reading comprehension skills to struggling learners, ESL learners, special ed students, and for reviewing and reteaching secondary students.

About the Author

Kristine Lindsay was an elementary teacher teaching ESL and working with struggling readers before she began working with PCI. Her teaching experience in the classroom led her to author several top selling products. She has a heart to see struggling learners, special ed students, English Language learners, and those with learning differences succeed in school. Kristine continues to author as well as consult on various projects.