Literacy+for+Struggling+Students



ADLIT.ORG (2014) []

AdLit.org offers a variety of information and resources for parents and teachers of adolescents who are struggling with reading and writing. On this user-friendly website, one can search for and find literature on a multitude of literacy topics. Depending on your search, AdLit.org will provide useful links to articles, books, webcasts, and various other multimedia sources. For teachers, one of the most helpful sections of the website is the Classroom Strategies page. Here you can find a library of strategies (sorted by literacy focus) to use with struggling students. Thorough details and accompanying worksheets are also provided, making it easy to understand and implement the strategies.

(Mounia & Preston)



POWERUPWHATWORKS.ORG (2013) [] Power Up What Works is an organization that is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education. An established team of experts in the fields of education, technology, differentiated instruction, UDL, and special education contribute resourceful information about literacy to the site. In the technology section, suggestions are made on how to incorporate technology in the classroom to support students who struggle with literacy. An interesting strategy mentioned is using videos with captions to expose struggling readers to additional print. Research shows that this strategy improves word recognition, fluency, reading speed, reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, word knowledge, decoding, and oral reading rates. This is an excellent approach for those students who are visual learners and helpful even for those who are not.

(Mounia & Preston)



LITERACYWITHOUTLIMITS.ORG (2007) []

This website is a great resource for teachers who are visual learners. Rather than simply suggesting strategies, the site provides videotaped lessons of teachers implementing instructional strategies to support students who struggle with literacy. Seeing the lessons in action gives you the chance to see how the fundamental strategy can be played out with a group of students, which you can then either mimic in your own classroom or alter to meet your own students’ needs. The highlighted classrooms range from grades 4-12.

(Mounia & Preston)



READINGROCKETS.ORG (2014) For years, educators have been trying to find ways to best serve all students in classrooms that are increasingly diversifying, both culturally and academically. In this Webcast, Carol Ann Tomlinson, G. Michael Pressley, and Louise Spear-Swerling have a round-table discussion about the challenges of differentiating reading instruction in the classroom. The experts also offer up strategies and advice to help teachers. Focus is placed on a teacher’s ability to be flexible, observant, and reflective of his/her students in order to help them grow as learners.

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(Mounia & Preston)



Baker, J. (2002). "Trilingualism." Excerpt from //The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom.// // (pp. 50-61). New York: New Press. //


 * https://ndmvaorg.wikispaces.com/file/view/TrilingualismArticle.pdf/358505247/TrilingualismArticle.pdf**

This essay, for me, is a concrete illustration of how mutual respect between teacher and student is directly linked to engagement and effective learning. Baker proposes that every student must speak three languages – home, school, and professional – and suggests that teaching students to be cognizant of their own “trilingualism” in this way is a key step to facilitating their process of learning how to contextualize their language choices. Baker discusses how she accomplishes this by having her students present, study, and comment on each other’s home languages.

(Preston & Mounia)



YOUTH COMMUNICATION (1980-Present)

@https://www.youthcomm.org/topics/index.html

Youth Communication’s mission is to build struggling students’ reading and writing skills by providing a platform for youth to read and write stories by each other for each other. In tracking their success, Youth Communication has found that when struggling or failing students come across the YC stories, they develop a passion for reading and writing. This is most likely because the process of finding links to background knowledge in both the content and the language is seamless; in many cases, students feel as though they are reading their own lives in YC stories. A number of stories are accompanied by lesson plans as well as videos, and so they are an easy go-to when trying to find more fun lessons that keep students engaged.

(Preston & Mounia)



CENTRAL COAST CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION (2002) (PDF: Mobile Apps For Adult Literacy)

@http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102474671827-87/adult_literacy_apps_5_30.pdf

The Central Coast Children’s Foundation supports non-profit organizations serving youth with disabilities and low-income families. One initiative focuses on increasing access to assistive technology and augmentative communication tools. The resource page attached contains 66 mobile apps that reinforce foundational and advanced literacy skills. Financial literacy and health literacy apps are also included. The authors also include a category of apps that instructors can teach their students to use with young children who are first learning to read. The inspiration for this category is the “Each One Teach One” principal pioneered in China in the early 20th century China by Jimmy Yen, which stresses the personal and societal importance of teaching students how to teach others.

(Preston & Mounia)



THE LITERACY SHED (2012)

http://www.literacyshed.com/

This website has a lot of creative, multi-sensory literacy lessons and exercises that account for multiple dimensions of literacy and cater to a variety of student needs. Using mostly video clips and mobile apps as the source “text”, class discussions and activities focus on challenging students to use their critical thinking skills to make meaning out of different visual and auditory cues. Lessons also come with writing projects and extension activities.

(Mounia & Preston)