SPED 780 Class 7 Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior Judith Mack, MSEd , MSW
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Transcript of SPED 780 Class 7 Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior Judith Mack, MSEd , MSW
SPED 780
Class 7
Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior
Judith Mack, MSEd, MSW
Adjunct Professor
Department of Special Education
Agenda
• Group presentation 20min
• Debrief online class 5
• Writing disabilities lecture 20
• Writing activity 10
• Vocabulary Centers 40
• Debrief-Discuss 15
• Synthesizing what we have learned about Reading and Writing (small groups) 20
Writing
• Handwriting
• Spelling/Vocabulary
• Composition
What Handwriting Problems Do Students
Experience?• Dysgraphia is a written language disorder
involving the mechanical writing skill.
• Problems with letter formation• Include malformation of letters, poor spacing, and
extremely slow writing
• Problems with fluency• Slow, labored handwriting may have negative effects
on performance in other areas of written expression.
• Handwriting problems are often associated with other problems, especially in spelling and composition.
How Is Handwriting Performance Assessed?
• Experienced teachers can readily recognize poor handwriting, so formal tests are not essential.
• Planning handwriting instruction• It is important that students with handwriting
problems keep writing.
• Monitoring handwriting progress• Teachers can use curriculum-based
assessment to evaluate both the legibility and the speed of handwriting.
What Interventions Can Help with Handwriting Difficulties?
• The fundamental question of whether to teach manuscript or cursive has yet to be resolved.
• Effective teaching practices in handwriting emphasize teacher modeling and student practice.
• Reinforcement and self-instruction training are other effective practices.
• Tracing
• Assistive Technology
What Spelling Problems Do Students Experience?
• Because the English language appears irregular in its spellings, it is difficult to learn to spell.
• There are 251 different spellings for the 44 sounds of English.
Spelling Errors and Effectsof Spelling Problems
• Most misspellings are phonetically acceptable, made in the middle of words, and involve alterations of a single phoneme.
• Difficulty with consonant clusters.
• Difficulty segmenting words into consonant clusters.
• Students who have substantial spelling problems can be expected to have difficulties in reading, in part, because of difficulties with phonemic awareness.
How Is Spelling Performance Assessed?
• The three basic methods used to determine the status of a student’s spelling skills are:• Dictation• Connected writing• Recognition
• Most standardized achievement batteries include measures of spelling skills.
• Teachers sometimes analyze spelling errors for consistent patterns in student’s mistakes.
• Informal spelling inventories and monitoring spelling progress (curriculum-based assessment) are two instructional methods.
What Interventions Help Students’Spelling Difficulties?
LESS EFFECTIVE MORE EFFECTIVE
Memorization
Presenting words in sentences or paragraphs
Using the study-test method
Ignoring errors
Presenting extensive lists of words to be learned each week
Having students devise their own methods of studying
Treating spelling as uninteresting and unimportant
Learning phoneme/grapheme correspondencePresenting words in lists
Using the test-study-test method
Requiring students to practice mistaken words, pointing out mistakes
Using brief lists of only 3 words per day
Providing specific strategies for studying, including peer tutoring
Rewarding achievement, using spelling games
Developmental Interventionsand Remedial Interventions
• For best results, teachers should:• Teach spelling skills directly• Include only a few spelling words a day• Provide distributed practices• Teach for generalization• Promote self-correction
Types of Spelling Words
• Regular words: cat
• High-frequency less regular words: said
• Homophonous words: they’re, there, their
• Demon words: misspell
What about Vocabulary?
Stages of Word Learning:
1.I never saw it before.
2.I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it means.
3.I recognize it in context – it has something to do with…
4.I know it.
Practice
Writing Activity
Words Their Way Core Principles
1. Use assessments to guide “just right” instruction
2. Follow a continuum of support
3. Actively involve students with high-level thinking
4. Provide multiple opportunities across contexts
5. Engage your students
3 Level Framework for Choosing Words to
Teach• Words Not to Teach • Words your students already know• Words that do not serve your lesson objectives • When in doubt, stick with no more than 8-10 words per
week
• Foot-in-the-Door Words• May be either content-specific or core academic words• Do not require deep knowledge, rather basic
understanding
• Deep knowledge words:• Essential for understanding text or overall lesson or unit• Or they are high-utility words that students will see in
newspapers or magazines
Words Their Way
• Developmental stages
• Instruction linked to assessment
• Word sorts, group activities, games
• Some teacher-led, some independent
Effective Teaching Procedures
• In addition to those practices listed in Table 13.2, teachers can use these five techniques:• Test-study-test• Practice procedures• Time delay• Morphographic spelling• Add-a-word
What Composition Problems Do Students Experience?
• Research results indicate that students with learning disabilities are more likely to have difficulty with:• Basic writing skills• Planning, organizing paragraphs, and revising• Thematic maturity and sentence complexity• Word usage, style, and vocabulary• Incorporation of important elements
• Problems with reading, spelling, and handwriting are related to difficulties with composition.
How Is Composition Performance Assessed?
• Screening• Screening for writing disabilities is difficult because many
students other than those with learning disabilities write poorly
• Planning composition instruction• Requires detailed information about students’ writing skills• The PSLT and TOWL are two norm-referenced instruments
that require students to compose writing samples
• Monitoring progress in composition• Can be easily done by regularly sampling students’ writing
and comparing samples taken at different times
What Interventions Help Students
with Composition Difficulties?• Teachers should encourage expression, but the
fundamental aspects of writing must not be disregarded.
• Many authorities recommend students learn to write simply by extensive practice in writing.• Students should plan, write, edit, and revise.
• One remedial intervention developed for students with writing problems or learning disabilities is called Expressive Writing.
Effective Teaching Procedures
• Self-regulated strategy development
• Learning strategy interventions
• Explicit teaching of the steps in the writing process
• Explicit teaching of the conventions of a writing genre
• Guided feedback
• Reinforcement
• Story grammar
• Cognitive-behavioral techniques
Text Structure
• Narrative vs. Expository
• Types of expository• Description• Sequence• Compare/Contrast• Problem/Solution• Cause/Effect
Planning Sheet for Compare-and-Contrast Essays
Vocabulary Centers
Groups of 5
4 Centers
Complete the activity at your station-about 15 minutes
Change centers
Debrief
Reading and Writing
Small groups
For Tomorrow
Bring Hallahan book to class
Reading:
•Required: • Hallahan, Chapter 7• Swanson
•Recommended: • Huntington