Monday, February 23, 2015
I understand it, I know it- but I can't say it
This week we are talking about language and math pathways. Zadina talks about students that struggle with issues such as knowing information, but are unable to say it or pronounce a sound or have trouble remembering math formulas. Have you had an experience with a student that has exhibited a problem discussed in the chapter? How did the student behave? What id you believe the problem to be at the time? How did you address it then? What would you do differently now?
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Since most of my career has been spent working with "at-risk" students, most of my students have experienced this "I read it, but I don't get it" problem. Reading Zadina's suggestions has been exciting because they provided validation through research of the approaches I have taken in class. for example, I often model reading while students follow along in the book so that they have both visual and auditory experience with the words. Some of my experiences in adjusting my teaching approach to incorporate various learning methods have been completely by accident and, yet, an awesome addition. For example, when one of my classes and I discussed the use of the chorus in Antigone, some of the students volunteered to read aloud and added a beat. The ensuing rap provided the auditory and kinesthetic stimuli to allow the students to enjoy and better understand a text others had told me was too far out of their reach.
ReplyDeleteLooking back on my first year of teaching, there were many instances where my students had trouble with the pronunciation of words. Of course they were only in first grade. As I was reading this chapter, I kept thinking about when I taught sight words. Some of my below-level students had a difficult time recognizing the words. They would want to say them phonetically. They had a hard time understanding that certain sight words do not always follow a phonetic pattern. Back then, I just thought it was because they were not paying attention, or there was no reinforcement at home. I would get so frustrated. I now see that my frustration was nothing compared to my students. We did sight words every day as a whole group, as well as in small group. For my lower level students not being able to fully use the orthographic pathway, that was not enough “firing” of the material. They needed more. I would try to incorporate the words more often as the school year progressed. For example, I would sporadically post index cards containing sight words around the classroom. During transition times, I would have students go on a scavenger hunt to find certain words. Although I tried to incorporate the sight words more than just whole group reading and small group instruction, for some students it still wasn’t enough. They were not able to make the connection to see that some words cannot be read phonetically. This information needed to be fired and wired constantly throughout the day- at school and at home. Sadly, some of my students from that year never mastered all of their sight words. They did not have enough time or practice to make the transition from working memory to long-term memory. Zadina stated, “As students learn to read and work with words, they are fine-tuning the area that recognizes words.” (2014, p.146) This is something that I will remember when working with students in the future. All students are constantly “fine-tuning”. I cannot just review a set of sight words every week or two and think that is enough for all students. Students with a disconnection of the orthographic pathway will not master the vital skill of recognizing sight words needed to read fluently. In the future I would make it a point to constantly review sight words, past and present, in order to give my students an opportunity to fire it until they wire it. I would incorporate the words into slide shows, math problems, or any other visual displays. I would make sure to bold or highlight the words so the students would recognize them as important. Every time we would get to a bold word, we would stop and review it. I would also have the students, such as early finishers, go through their textbooks to complete sight word scavenger hunts. The students would list the words and then have to recite the words to me at a given time. I would definitely make it a priority to review sight words throughout the day, every day. Hopefully this would allow students an opportunity to move difficult sight words from their working memory to their long-term memory.
ReplyDeleteAshley, that is so insightful of you. I teach first grade and sight words are so important this year. Some students move so quickly through them and some take more time. I have come up with little tricks over the course of teaching that help them see it. For example, I would have them wear a notecard with their words and tell them to point to a word while standing in line. It helped to differentiate it like that because I find that with the students who are catching on quickly and need less firing, they get bored very easily! Plus the students who need more firing like the extra TLC
DeleteI love the idea of having the students wear their sight words. they are able to refer to them quickly and are easily accessible.
DeleteYes! Last semester while student teaching I had a student that struggled profusely with Algebra. If you would sit down with him one on one and ask him questions, he would explain it correctly. Then I would look at his paper and see that what he wrote down was wrong. For example he would tell you "oh that would be 2 times x times y" then write on his paper "2x/y". It had no rhyme or reason to it. It eventually came out that he had dyslexia, but he had minimal accommodations for it at the school. This student had a "weak passage" in the brain. There were disconnects between what he would say and what he would write. The teacher ended up letting the student take the paper pencil test during class, come back during another class and talk the teacher through his steps verbally. He ended up passing the class from doing all his work and completing each test like this. He knew the concepts, but he couldn't write the work down correctly. If I were the teacher in this situation, I probably would have the student go to a different room and have the test read aloud and have him record how to specifically work each problem on a recording device. However, when problems start becoming more complicated and the student cannot explain every step verbally, I don't know what this student will do.
ReplyDeleteMeredith,
DeleteI understand that some parents would not want to disclose a diagnosis like dyslexia because they do not want their child labeled. On the other hand, I feel that fewer accommodations at the school level will lead to increased frustration on the part of the student since they cannot get the support they need to succeed. I'm sure that if you knew about the dyslexia upfront, that you could have tailored instruction more carefully to meet his needs. It is unfortunate that you didn't know sooner and I'm sure it led to frustration for him.
-Jamie Hipp
Jamie, I completely agree with you. As I mentioned in my post, I also had a student who did not want his dyslexia known. It created a difficult situation and I think it caused unnecessary frustration for both of us. I think that teachers need to know about students' learning disabilities so that we can make appropriate accommodations and help the students as best we can.
DeleteThis happened to me quite a bit while I taught high school classes at DSHS. Most often I had students who claimed to know the information but could not effectively convey what they were thinking. I have, in the past, always assumed it to be a problem of unfamiliarity with the source material or concept. I have had less experience with students not knowing how to pronounce words in order to describe what they know, or rather my students generally have no problem butchering a word or phrase in an attempt to get at what they are trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteIn situations when a student could not effectively communicate the idea to me or the class, most of the time I would simply move on to someone else who could better vocalize the concept for the class. Then I would generally go back to the previous student to make sure they’re conception was the same.
Jonathan, what a great idea to circle back to them later. Especially at that age they are prone to being embarrassed and so moving on quickly will help preserve that.
DeleteI have experienced a few students who had serious difficulty with problems that involved fractions. Fractions are a concept that seems to be scary for a lot of students, so when they have difficulty with these types of problems my first thought isn't that the student has dyslexia or dyscalculia. One student in particular would say to me, for example, 4/3 but he would write 3/4 on his paper. Something was happening between what he said out loud to me and what he wrote on his paper. He made this mistake pretty much every time he wrote a fraction. It made solving single and multi-step equations extremely difficult for him, and when we got to simplifying rational expressions it was nearly impossible. Initially, I though that the student just didn't understand fractions. I even spent time reviewing arithmetic involving fractions with the whole class in hopes that it would help the problem. After speaking with his parents about the ongoing problem, I learned that this particular student did have dyslexia but did not want people to know about it. Looking back on the experience, I think that I would try to use physical objects to review the concept of fractions with this student. Perhaps if he had a strong understanding of fractions at the most basic level it would help him with the mistakes he made.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds so similar to the situation I dealt with last semester. It really is unfortunate for the child when their disability is not shared with the teachers. However, now that I'm realizing that not all parents share this with their child's teachers, it helps me to be more patient with students. I want to find the root of the problem rather than jump to conclusions.
DeleteExactly. Before I understood that students truly could be suffering from cognitive disabilities, I did jump to conclusions. I just blamed it on poor basic skills rather than thinking there could be a bigger problem. From my current high school placement, I am realizing that misconceptions or misunderstandings serve as the basis of a lot of issues. So like you said, I am trying to approach situations with a more open mind so I can work to find the root of the problem rather than getting frustrated and blaming it on lack of skills.
DeleteI have a student this year who was scoring low on tests, both in ELA and math. When we did it together, she knew how, but the moment she had to do it in isolation it was as if she had never seen it before. I kept working with her and started sending her to intervention. One day in October she was absent and I had her take her math test in the office out of connivence. She was gone for a while, but came back and scored at 95%! I was skeptical and so I asked her about it, mostly if anyone had helped her not knowing it was a test. She said no, it was just that she had enough time to do it. A lightbulb went off for me, it wasn't that she didn't know the information, she just needed the time for her firing to happen. I met with her mom on a home visit a few weeks later and told her that no matter who her teacher was she and her daughter needed to ensure that the teacher was giving her enough time to do her work thoroughly. It wasn't that she wasn't bright, she just needed more time to process it and get her thoughts together. Now, if the classroom is too loud or she is feeling overwhelmed I let her do her work on a clipboard under my desk. It's a little unconventional, but it works for her!
ReplyDeleteI love that she works under your desk sometimes, I bet giving her that private space helps her think better and do better on her assignments. My nephew's 2nd grade classroom has a reading fort in the corner and he said the students alternate who gets to read in there and that it feels like you are in your own little world and just you want to read forever. So I could see this applying to assignments too! Having your own space without outside distractions could make any student do better in school.
DeleteKaty,
DeleteIt's awesome that you can adapt to learner preferences! Many best practices books also promote student movement (at their will) around the classroom. Not many teachers would be so understanding of learner differences nor would they make accommodations like you have...amazing!
-Jamie Hipp
I actually have a different problem in my classroom. Frequently my students try very hard to say what they mean. I have noticed that on many occasions they stumble on their words while they try to work out their question on thought. I often have to ask them to come back to me when they know what they are trying to say or ask. I find that when a student speaks in jumbled thought it can often confuse other students that thought they understood a concept.
ReplyDeleteI taught a precious third grade boy during my student teaching internship. This student was extremely respectful, responsible, and intelligent and never made lower than a 'B' on any homework assignment or assessment. One week, in an attempt to vary assessment practices, my mentor teacher asked students to present vocabulary orally, complete with pictures that represent the word and student-created sentences using the new vocabulary word. The student's word was 'geometric' and he had printed out many pictures of shapes for his presentation. He had also written a script of what he had planned to say and the class was excited when it was his turn. Unfortunately, his presentation was absolutely abysmal. He was not making sense, and even with the assistance of pronunciation of certain words by the mentor teacher, he crumbled. Approximately two minutes into his presentation, he could sense that he was not as good as his peers and you could see the frustration come across his face. He started shaking and the mentor teacher asked urged him to keep going but he started crying and asked to go to the bathroom.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, the mentor teacher kept blaming what had happened on the student, telling him that he needed to be able to speak aloud if "he wanted to move on to the fourth grade." In all actuality, considering it was apparent that he had a deep understanding of the content of what he was learning (as evidenced by A's and B's), this student was displaying signs of a phonological deficit, which was identified a year later by the speech therapist after much frustration with this child's fourth-grade teacher. After reading Chapter 6, I wish the mentor teacher would have referred this student to the speech therapist for earlier diagnosis and intervention and should have allowed this student to utilize a non-oral assessment for demonstrating his knowledge of new vocabulary.
-Jamie Hipp
This is so terrible! What a traumatic presentation experience for such a young student. Especially one who was so well prepared and obviously trying his hardest to do great work. It seems like your mentor teacher should have taken into consideration the fact that the student was so well prepared and had great examples. I guess giving presentations is something that does make many students nervous, so your teacher was just assuming that the student was scared to speak in front of the class. I wish she would have spoken to the student individually instead of continuously blaming him for the situation. I definitely agree that your teacher should have referred the student to a speech therapist at the time.
DeleteThat is such a heartbreaking story. The student was obviously having trouble with his language pathway. To me, the saddest part of this is that there was no diagnosis until fourth grade. Sometimes I believe that teachers need more training on how to recognize student deficits. By making teachers more aware of what to look for when possibly diagnosing a deficit in students early on, students would be able to get the help they need earlier. With teachers being so busy, not really sure where and when these would take place.
DeleteI have problems with students remembering information they have been taught in a matter of minuets. My students with sever cognitive disabilities struggle with this in almost every subject. They become very anxious and frustrated when they are trying to recall information and guess to get through it. These academic issues are listed in their IEPs and I use a lot of repetition, I say, we say, you say, as well as pictures to help prompt my students. When these techniques are not enough I am always looking for other ways to teach because sometimes what you tried in one lesson does not work in the next.
ReplyDeleteMorgan
Morgan, can you give an example of when/ how you use pictures? That seems like a helpful strategy.
DeleteWe use a leveled reading assessment where students read a story then answer questions 1-on-1 with a test administrator. We find that this can be very challenging for many students, and often we think a student may understand more than s/he articulates. We've tried modifying the assessment structure for individual students, for example by allowing more prompts or in extreme cases offering a multiple choice option. Has anyone else used strategies that work for comprehension assessments? I work with K-2 students, so communicating through writing can be challenging too.
ReplyDelete