A place for teachers and other providers of special education services to support each other, share information, and discuss topics, including assessment.
High School Reading and Vocabulary Instruction
I am teaching a diploma-track, senior English class with students with learning disabilities. A few of my students still comprehend at the 4th-5th grade levels and struggle with high school level vocabulary. Does anyone have ideas for age-appropriate reading and vocabulary instruction that will support my students without insulting them?
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Hi Harmony, I found this
Hi Harmony,
I found this article Adolescent Literacy: Helping Students Who Read Below Grade Level. There are some great tips in the article.
I have been teaching high
I have been teaching high school English and Reading and college reading for several years now. I found the website www.townsendpress.com to be an invaluable tool. It is a free website that has online activities for both reading and vocabulary. I use the vocabulary with my high school special ed students. The lowest level is for grades 4-5. It teaches vocabulary in context very well and has online activities that go along with it. I love this website. They also have a library in which they sell books for $1.00 per copy. NO that is not a typo. There are the classics written at a lower grade level to high intrest lower readability for high school students or ELL students. Check it out.
Actually,that is not quite
Actually,that is not quite accurate. I just went to this web site and you have to be using their texts to access the resources for free.
Harriet.
Graphic organizers?
Harmony - even in the "regular" classroom with students at grade level, I still use graphic organizers in high school. With vocabulary you can try a 4 square approach (Google Images should have several results for "4 square vocabulary graphic organizers"). I have modified the traditional 4 square to include a visual representation of the word (from a cartoon, hand drawn, or an image from online) for my visual learners. With most 4 squares, students will study synonyms, antonyms, applications, etc.
Graphic organizers?
Harmony - even in the "regular" classroom with students at grade level, I still use graphic organizers in high school. With vocabulary you can try a 4 square approach (Google Images should have several results for "4 square vocabulary graphic organizers"). I have modified the traditional 4 square to include a visual representation of the word (from a cartoon, hand drawn, or an image from online) for my visual learners. With most 4 squares, students will study synonyms, antonyms, applications, etc.
I found Hubert's article
I found Hubert's article informative!
I also use graphic prganizers all the time - very useful with DI.
I came across this reading a while back, about a successful vocabulary program in a large school:
http://www.fisherandfrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/jespar-vocab.pdf