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Introduction to my process and desire to improve reading comprehension for students with special needs.As a Special Education Specialist, an individual, parent, and grandparent of children with special needs, I realized that there was a need for intervention and innovative strategies to help with improving reading comprehension. The reading assignments, coursework, and innovative exploration and hands-on tasks served as confirmation of my desire to change my teaching practices and embed innovation into my teaching and delivery of instruction for my students.
The students enrolled in my Functional Life Skills and Transition program classes are between the ages of 13 and 21. However, these students were at a pre-primer to nearly 2nd-grade reading levels. Additionally, their reading decoding and comprehension levels were at either frustration or instructional versus independent. It was evident that traditional teaching methods these students had previous experiences since the beginning of their academic background was not successful and failed to allow these students to be academically successful in all of the core academic subject areas. My action research project focused on the use of various innovative strategies ranging from low tech (dry erase boards, communication boards, symbols, rainbow reading techniques, etc.) to the use of technical devices (i.e., iPads, laptops, desktop computers, touch screen interactive boards, etc.). Students participate in various assessments and data collection, which included baseline, prior-knowledge, during, and after instruction. Students demonstrated their comprehension by answering WH (what, who, where, when, how, and why) questions through multiple-choice, short answer, matching, oral, and additional methods. Students participated in various hands-on activities to demonstrate their knowledge and comprehension of reading passages/text. The students drew pictures, made short stop-motion videos, and participate in short plays and puppet shows. Lastly, students shared their knowledge and comprehension with others (staff members, peers, and family members). An added benefit to participating in the innovative reading comprehension lessons, activities, assignments, tasks, and projects is that students made a notable improvement in their writing, keyboarding, and retell skills. |
LESSONS
 HOW-TOs
 REFERENCES
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ASSESSMENT
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Common Core State Standards for ELA, Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science and Technical SubjectsClick on image below to be directed to CCSS ELA Standards website
English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
READING COMPREHENSION STANDARDS TARGETED
RLK.1. With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. RL1.1. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text. RL2.1. Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text. RLK.2. With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details. RL1.2. Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson. RL2.2. Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral. RLK.3. With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story. RL1.3. Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details. RL2.3. Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges. RLK.4. Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.. RL.K.10. Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
English Language Development Framework
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Audible is an online website and an app that contains a large database of digital audiobooks. Additionally, audible's database includes educational programming, magazines, newspapers, radio and televised programming. Audible was used for students to following along when reading various novels and completing their literature reviews.
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Bookshare is an online database of over 760,000 novels, textbooks and other reading materials for individuals diagnosed with various disabilities (i.e.dyslexia, visual impairments, cerebral palsy, and other reading disabilities). Bookshare was used for students with higher reading levels.
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News-2-you (n2y) is an online learning platform for students with special needs. The n2y app allows students access to standards-based academic content, weekly differentiated newspaper, symbol communication tools, skill-based learning activities, self-regulation solution and professional development.
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APPS
Click and Play or arrows to view the various apps.
The above apps are a few of the iPad apps utilized to support reading and reading comprehension for students. Additionally apps, descriptions and links can be found on the reference pages.
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Teacher generated and curriculum lesson plans, with accommodations, modifications and student expectations.
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Screencast, Adobe Spark, YouTube videos, downloadable supplemental tools, strategies, resources, online resources for working with students with special needs.
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Reading comprehension resources, academic articles, suggested books, readings,, websites, videos, innovative resources, and list of various reading comprehension, teaching strategies, and etc
Assessments, quizzes, rubrics, data, graphs and etc.
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