Sunday, December 13, 2009

Online articles 12-13-09

Here is the first part of my blog for this week. This is the online articles. and I hope I read the right articles because my computer took me to different sites I think!!

How Children learn to read:
When I began reading this article, I found this beginning part to be every important: "To learn to read well, children need the blocks of knowing the sounds of letters and the blocks of knowing the meanings of words (vocabulary), word parts (grammatical markers) and groups of words (overall meaning or semantics)" (Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities). All children need to know the building blocks to reading otherwise they are going to struggle with reading for the majority of their school careers and beyond. Learning to read was a hard thing for me when I was in elementary school. I remember that they would break us up in to three separate reading groups. These groups were determined by how we read. I was in the middle group, but I can tell you to this day I wanted to be in the highest reading group and it lowered my self esteem knowing that I wasn't in the group and that even though no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't going to get moved into that group. I feel that somewhere along the lines, my reading skills became not up to the highest standards. Maybe it was from changing elementary school when I was little.

I also like how the article brought up the point of how parents should be meeting with their children's teachers to see their teaching style and what methods the teacher is using and also to examine the work their child is being given by their teacher. This is something I think parents over look. I think that parents, at times, let things go because they assume all teachers are doing their jobs properly and their child is learn correctly and is not having problems. I look at my job and even though I'm a teacher for an after school program through Sarah Reed Children's Center, it is my job to do each child's homework with them from their regular school and to make sure it is done appropriately, I at times look at that and think to myself...I do homework everyday with children that are not mine and I bet I know more about their learning disabilities than their parents do because their homework is getting done with me. I think if more parents were to sit down and do their homework with their children they would have more insight on what their children are struggling with and where they are excelling.

From the rest of the article the two most important points I liked was that each child needs and effective reading program and that parents can find signs of early learning disabilities if they try. I liked the effective reading program idea because it speaks about six different components that are important with reading. I also like how it stress certain parts of reading that are essential in making sure the child becomes a fluent reader.

Reading and Dyslexia:
The multimedia I selected was reading and the brain. First I want to say that I really enjoyed this part of the homework. I liked the watching the video and hearing first hand from the parent, child, and the doctor. OK, so for my reactions... I think it's amazing how much technology we have now days to do things like what this clip showed. We can actually get an fMRI of a child's brain who has dyslexia. From this fMRI, we can see which hemispheres of the brain are doing what, when, and why. In the clip it said that the "normal readers" left hemisphere light up more when reading where as those with dyslexia, their left hemisphere don't light up as much. It was also interesting to hear that dyslexia is biologically based. I think this clip was very informative and I really enjoyed it.

2 comments:

  1. I love the technology to! How neat that they are able to show a kid their brain and explain why they may be struggling! I think that would make the disablitiy mean more to the student, give them something to work towards!

    As for the article you touched on many of the points I was going to touch on. I think the building blocks are key. Nothing frustrates me more than when teachers just keep moving on without making sure the previous points are covered and understood, you can not play catch up with reading.

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  2. I am not sure if how busy life seems now, how fast paced the world is moving, the more single parent homes that may inhibit students learning. I don't beleive that most parents sit down with their chldren and do their homework with them. I will say that some of the local schools in the area are posting students grades online available for parents to view. They can check and see if their child is doing their homework, handing in assignments, struggling in a specific course etc. It takes involved parents to make a diference. I remember my parents sitting down with me and going over my homework with me. As I got older I was encouraged to be more independent but if I had a question I knew which parent to go to for a question with a specific subject. I also knew which parent would have the most patience as well. Your students are lucky to have you. You probably are more aware of your students learning disability than their parents. At least they have you. You provide a safe environmnet to learn and ask questions in. You can help build their self esteem by encouraging them more and praising them when do good work.

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