| Putting It All | Introduction | - | |
| Help | [Orientation] Support | Lesson | Practice | - |
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Have you ever seen a child play with Legos? Legos are those building blocks that connect to form all kinds of interesting things. When you purchase a set, in the box are all these wonderful, colorful pieces, in different sizes and shapes that have lots of potential for a spectacular finished product. But the pieces by themselves are useless until they are put together to form an object. A builder with a plan is needed to make that happen. The processes of reading comprehension and teaching reading comprehension are like building with a set of Legos from a number of perspectives. One builder who needs a plan for construction is the individual during the process of reading who has many pieces to put together to construct meaning from print. Putting it all together requires a great deal of coordination and metacognitive functioning. Another builder is the teacher who has many factors to consider in teaching reading comprehension to students with reading disabilities. You have learned many things about teaching reading comprehension in this Online Academy Series. None of this information in isolation will do anybody any good, like the Lego pieces in the box. The pieces have to be put together skillfully and artfully to form proficient reading and effective teaching. This module will help you do that. It will help you understand how readers need to package strategic reading and how you need to package strategic teaching of reading. Lesson 1, Focus on the Reader, deals with an often missing piece, the reader himself. Its message is to keep the individual students who are struggling to construct meaning from print in the forefront of teaching, to recognize that reading is a highly personal process, and to employ teaching practices that respect students as people and acknowledge their uniqueness. It suggests that dialogue between teachers and students and among students is a way to enhance the construction of personal meaning. A good portion of the lesson focuses on the metacognitive requirements for readers to take control of the reading process with self-regulation strategies. Lesson 2, Multicomponent Strategies, addresses the issue of strategic packaging for students, acknowledging that individual strategies alone are not sufficient. Students need to learn how to put the pieces together to form a coordinated and cohesive approach to constructing meaning. You will learn examples of comprehensive strategies so that you can help students become proficient, strategic readers. Lesson 3, Class and School-Wide Programs for Reading Comprehension, provides guidance in making decisions about selecting and using programs in the classroom and the school. In the lesson, we will discuss program implications of the effective teaching practices you have learned throughout these lessons, and we will identify important factors that create the context for program selection and use. We will also address the organization of classroom instruction and selection of class- and school-wide programs based on research validation criteria. This is the last module in the Online Academy series. If you have been studying all or most of the lessons in the series, you have lots of pieces of information ... important information ... but pieces of it. By studying this module, you will gain insight into putting it all together to help students with reading disabilities. In most cases it is not crucial that the modules be studied in order. However, unless you have studied the lessons in the other modules, this module won't make sense to you. That stands to reason, doesn't it? How can you study a module that seeks to help you "put it all together" if you don't know what "it" is? |
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