Well, what do you do on your spring break?
You don't turn to a blog that you almost abandoned and decide to post again? Or do you turn your house upside down cleaning out cabinets and other places in your house that really really need it? Do you lounge around until the middle of the day and then do a little bit of research for a project that you have been working on for years . . .
I do all of that lol! Why shouldn't I? I am a woman of the world.
So assistive technology has been on my mind recently. I mean I can't stop thinking about it when I start thinking about lesson planning, IEP planning and all the other school planning that I have to think of on a daily basis.
I just signed up for a new webinar about assistive technology and helping struggling readers access grade level content. This is fascinating and amazing if people are finally accepting this as a thing to do!
So many people get bogged down by what the students can actually read, that they lose the fact that students are not understanding what they read. I have students who can read 40 random words per minute at 90% accuracy. I think it's great. BUT if you listen to the old research that tells us how reading faster predicts comprehension you would be going down a terrible path and taking your students with you! Much of that research was not interpreted correctly. And of course, since I know all (ROFLOL) I completely understand it! I didn't have to read through it and talk with people and see it at work with actual students. . . anyway. What I get out of this research is that if students are spending all of their time decoding they are not comprehending. BUT in this post we are not talking about those students, because that is a different set of issues. We are discussing the students who understand what they read, but read slowly. I told a teacher once that my student didn't even speak in general conversation using 40 words per minute so there was no way she was going to be able to read 100 + words in a minute. Now this student that I have in mind did eventually get to around 90 words per minute, but it took her until 6th grade and it took many many many hours of reading to her and with her. What happens to the student who has the book read to them as they read along? What if this student is given the time and space to read at their pace and rate? What if the student is given some technology that helps them with the words they can't read? (I once saw a first grader read every word in a sentence EXCEPT orchard.) These students in the classroom could easily use a simple technology solution such as siri to help them prounounce the words.
I'm not going to go on and on about this. I just wanted to visit this a moment. I want people to go in and evaluate what they are doing and see if it is truly meeting the needs of their students. When we ask ourselves what is the learning goal for each of the students, we will have a clearer path for how to to help them reach that goal.
Click on this link if you think you might want to view this webinar. If you sign up and can't view it at the time, you can always view a recording later, but you have to sign up first.
Turn Struggling Readers Into Leaders Using Assistive Technology
Make today so awesome that yesterday is jealous!
