Once again, reading comprehension is that part of reading that seems to be the last frontier. We all need to make sure that we are presenting all of the components of reading comprehension if we expect students to fully understand what they are reading. Teaching students how to use their schema plus evidence in a story to form an inference can actually be a lot of fun. Take a look […]
Read moreIt’s a new year and I’m ready with new and exciting ideas! I’ve been targeting Reading Comprehension because it seems to be that piece that causes issues with students once they master decoding. You’ll see two concrete ideas on how to introduce the concept of deciding what’s important while reading. Students need to understand that everything in a story is not important so filtering out the fluff is a must […]
Read moreYou know how much I LOVE visuals! I especially love it when I can use concrete items to teach a concept. When you have a strong visual like this, you’ve got a winner! I found today’s 3D example in a book by Tanny McGreager called Comprehension Connections. This is just one more great example from her book that I’m excited to share. She uses several very creative, concrete examples and […]
Read moreI know you must have tried a variety of things out of necessity or even desperation when you have a student with behaviors you want to go away. Every time I hear about what someone came up with to help make a problem better, I can only imagine that there are hundreds, even thousands of unique, smart, clever ideas that have been used. If only we could all share what […]
Read moreHow can we make reading comprehension more understandable? One way is to start with something concrete and move to the abstract! I learned so many ideas from Tanny McGregor’s book, Comprehension Connections! Her ideas are outstanding for our students who need to see, touch, and hear information before they understand. As you watch today’s video, think about that student with autism, SLD, Down Syndrome, ADD, ADHD or that slow learner […]
Read moreI know that this is the third tip from the recent conference on executive functioning I attended, but I can’t help myself!!! So many of our children with disabilities need our help with planning and task completion. I recently listened to an educator give complicated verbal instructions to a group of children and a couple of things happened. First, several of the boys got in trouble because they weren’t listening […]
Read moreHow many of you end up being the teacher who has to remind that one student to “get going” on a task, or “hurry up” because time is almost over for a task to be completed? What about that child at home who just takes his/her time to get ready for school and the bus is about to arrive? If you are the schedule, then the child is not pre-planning […]
Read moreI don’t know why I love data but I do! First off, the term Time Horizon was new to me and the information about how this applies to children and adults from ages 2 to 35 was fascinating!!! This is one of the dozens of new terms, ideas and concepts that I learned when I listened to Sarah Ward, an SLP AND expert in the area of executive functioning! If […]
Read moreWe all know that the lack of joint attention is a huge issue for children on the autism spectrum. If we can’t get a child’s attention, they don’t engage with us. If we can’t get a child’s attention, we can’t show them what we want them to learn. If we can’t get a child’s attention, they will miss out on social interactions, language development, and many other skill developments that […]
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