Download ppt class 7 - Judith Mack SPED 780 June 2012

SPED 780
Class 7
Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior
Judith Mack, MSEd, MSW
Adjunct Professor
Department of Special Education
Agenda
• Group presentation 20min
• Debrief online class 5
• Writing disabilities lecture 20
• Writing activity 10
• Vocabulary Centers 40
• Debrief-Discuss 15
• Synthesizing what we have learned about Reading and
Writing (small groups) 20
Writing
• Handwriting
• Spelling/Vocabulary
• Composition
What Handwriting Problems
Do Students Experience?
• Dysgraphia is a written language disorder involving
the mechanical writing skill.
• Problems with letter formation
• Include malformation of letters, poor spacing, and
extremely slow writing
• Problems with fluency
• Slow, labored handwriting may have negative effects on
performance in other areas of written expression.
• Handwriting problems are often associated with
other problems, especially in spelling and
composition.
How Is Handwriting Performance
Assessed?
•
Experienced teachers can readily recognize
poor handwriting, so formal tests are not
essential.
•
Planning handwriting instruction
•
•
It is important that students with handwriting
problems keep writing.
Monitoring handwriting progress
•
Teachers can use curriculum-based assessment
to evaluate both the legibility and the speed of
handwriting.
What Interventions Can Help
with Handwriting Difficulties?
• The fundamental question of whether to teach
manuscript or cursive has yet to be resolved.
• Effective teaching practices in handwriting
emphasize teacher modeling and student practice.
• Reinforcement and self-instruction training are other
effective practices.
• Tracing
• Assistive Technology
What Spelling Problems Do
Students Experience?
• Because the English language appears
irregular in its spellings, it is difficult to learn
to spell.
• There are 251 different spellings for the 44 sounds
of English.
Spelling Errors and Effects
of Spelling Problems
• Most misspellings are phonetically acceptable,
made in the middle of words, and involve
alterations of a single phoneme.
• Difficulty with consonant clusters.
• Difficulty segmenting words into consonant
clusters.
• Students who have substantial spelling problems
can be expected to have difficulties in reading, in
part, because of difficulties with phonemic
awareness.
How Is Spelling Performance
Assessed?
• The three basic methods used to determine the status of a
student’s spelling skills are:
• Dictation
• Connected writing
• Recognition
• Most standardized achievement batteries include measures of
spelling skills.
• Teachers sometimes analyze spelling errors for consistent
patterns in student’s mistakes.
• Informal spelling inventories and monitoring spelling progress
(curriculum-based assessment) are two instructional methods.
What Interventions Help Students’
Spelling Difficulties?
LESS EFFECTIVE
MORE EFFECTIVE
Memorization
Learning phoneme/grapheme
correspondence
Presenting words in lists
Presenting words in sentences or
paragraphs
Using the study-test method
Using the test-study-test method
Ignoring errors
Requiring students to practice mistaken
words, pointing out mistakes
Presenting extensive lists of words to be
learned each week
Using brief lists of only 3 words per day
Having students devise their own
methods of studying
Providing specific strategies for studying,
including peer tutoring
Treating spelling as uninteresting and
unimportant
Rewarding achievement, using spelling
games
Developmental Interventions
and Remedial Interventions
• For best results, teachers should:
•
•
•
•
•
Teach spelling skills directly
Include only a few spelling words a day
Provide distributed practices
Teach for generalization
Promote self-correction
Types of Spelling Words
• Regular words: cat
• High-frequency less regular words: said
• Homophonous words: they’re, there, their
• Demon words: misspell
What about Vocabulary?
Stages of Word Learning:
1.I never saw it before.
2.I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it means.
3.I recognize it in context – it has something to do
with…
4.I know it.
Practice
Writing Activity
Words Their Way Core
Principles
1. Use assessments to guide “just right” instruction
2. Follow a continuum of support
3. Actively involve students with high-level thinking
4. Provide multiple opportunities across contexts
5. Engage your students
3 Level Framework for
Choosing Words to Teach
• Words Not to Teach
• Words your students already know
• Words that do not serve your lesson objectives
• When in doubt, stick with no more than 8-10 words per week
• Foot-in-the-Door Words
• May be either content-specific or core academic words
• Do not require deep knowledge, rather basic understanding
• Deep knowledge words:
• Essential for understanding text or overall lesson or unit
• Or they are high-utility words that students will see in
newspapers or magazines
Words Their Way
• Developmental stages
• Instruction linked to assessment
• Word sorts, group activities, games
• Some teacher-led, some independent
Effective Teaching Procedures
• In addition to those practices listed in Table
13.2, teachers can use these five techniques:
•
•
•
•
•
Test-study-test
Practice procedures
Time delay
Morphographic spelling
Add-a-word
What Composition Problems Do
Students Experience?
• Research results indicate that students with learning
disabilities are more likely to have difficulty with:
•
•
•
•
•
Basic writing skills
Planning, organizing paragraphs, and revising
Thematic maturity and sentence complexity
Word usage, style, and vocabulary
Incorporation of important elements
• Problems with reading, spelling, and handwriting are
related to difficulties with composition.
How Is Composition Performance
Assessed?
• Screening
• Screening for writing disabilities is difficult because many
students other than those with learning disabilities write
poorly
• Planning composition instruction
• Requires detailed information about students’ writing skills
• The PSLT and TOWL are two norm-referenced instruments
that require students to compose writing samples
• Monitoring progress in composition
• Can be easily done by regularly sampling students’ writing
and comparing samples taken at different times
What Interventions Help Students
with Composition Difficulties?
• Teachers should encourage expression, but the
fundamental aspects of writing must not be disregarded.
• Many authorities recommend students learn to write
simply by extensive practice in writing.
• Students should plan, write, edit, and revise.
• One remedial intervention developed for students with
writing problems or learning disabilities is called
Expressive Writing.
Effective Teaching Procedures
• Self-regulated strategy development
• Learning strategy interventions
• Explicit teaching of the steps in the writing process
• Explicit teaching of the conventions of a writing genre
• Guided feedback
• Reinforcement
• Story grammar
• Cognitive-behavioral techniques
Text Structure
• Narrative vs. Expository
• Types of expository
•
•
•
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Description
Sequence
Compare/Contrast
Problem/Solution
Cause/Effect
Planning Sheet for Compare-and-Contrast Essays
Vocabulary Centers
Groups of 5
4 Centers
Complete the activity at your station-about 15 minutes
Change centers
Debrief
Reading and Writing
Small groups
For Tomorrow
Bring Hallahan book to class
Reading:
• Required:
• Hallahan, Chapter 7
• Swanson
• Recommended:
• Huntington