Week 4

           This week I enjoyed the PowerPoint’s and the information provided as well as the reading.  One thing that stuck out the most to me was the idea of effectively reaching students in all aspects of reading: vocabulary, phonemic awareness, fluency, phonics, and comprehension.  There are so many different variables when it comes to reading, which, I believe, is why reading can be so difficult for some students.  I love how there are an abundance of technological resources available that target each component of reading. 

            We use the program Read Naturally in our classroom; however, it is not effective with all students.  One of our students is has decoding problems, and information processing issues.  Last year he was in a general education classroom and would come to our room two times a week for remediation using Reading Mastery.  At this moment, he is not even at the lesson that he ended at last school year.  His focus, motivation, and processing issues influence this greatly.  Out of all of our second graders participating in Read Naturally, he is unable to because we are still focusing on the fundamentals and simple aspects of reading and not too much on fluency at the moment.  Nonetheless, I think that Reading Naturally is a fantastic program.  Students are able to track their progress, see their goal, and monitor their reading.  It is motivating when a student sees him or herself reading their reading goal or even go way above it.  It gives students the opportunity to be proud of their selves, and at the same time gain fluency in their reading. 

            It is amazing to me the abundance of reading resources available on the web.  In particular, I really like Tumble Books; however, I hope to discover more and more resources and websites that encourage reading.  With phonemic awareness it is important to choose a program that is accurate.  There are some programs that are very computerized and say “robot sounds” even when slowing down, exaggerating, and altering sound patterns to recognize easier.  For students with disabilities, it is important that they constantly hear the correct way to say or read words because it takes them that much longer to remember and embed that into their brains.  There is no time to have them hear how to say words or sounds the wrong way because it just further puts them back.  This is why I love the Reading Master program: it offers immediate feedback and corrections.  There is so much repetition involved. 
            I agree that although students have the tools available, they still must be taught how to use those tools.  Otherwise, those tools are completely useless and not meaningful or effective.  The concept of UDL is also very important – especially in the special education classroom.  Students have to have multiple ways of learning information and teachers need to learn effective ways to teach subjects and concepts in multiple ways.  Technology, I believe, can be an important resource in relation to UDL because it also those opportunities for students to learn in various ways, teaching to teach in variety of ways, and students to engaging in various of ways as well.