Special education
A Reading model is one of the techniques that are being used in educational institutions, especially those that involve the students with special education needs. The reading model techniques enable the students to understand comprehension readings, and making good meaning out of the subject matter of the discussion. It also enables the students with special needs in education to have intensive intervention. This is achieved by, enabling them improve their reading skills, at the early stages of their education in schools.
The model also enables the students with special education needs, to develop in a progressive process by building their experiences in reading. This research paper will focus on the reading models, which teachers and other instructors of special education schools can use to improve on the reading skills of their students. This is focused at achieving high student performance in their academics, as the many of the laws on persons with disabilities and their rights require. The paper also focuses on the various researches, which have been conducted concerning the reading model.
Various strategies that can be applied to improve the reading ability of students in special education departments, have been analyzed so as to make it easy to comply with, the law on No Child Left Behind, that seeks to achieve equality in the provision of all students in schools. Reading model So as to be able to comply with the requirements of the law on No Child Left Behind, several techniques have been researched on that can help schools to achieve the goals and objectives of the law, and other laws that advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities.
Most schools have been able to discover that most of their students encounter numerous challenges as they acquire their academic qualifications which in turn affect their performance levels in schools. It thus becomes necessary for the teachers and other administrators, to focus on the reading skills of the students with special needs, so as to improve on the reading courses. This will be in line with the improvements, which are being carried out in the other subjects like mathematics (Stenson 2006).
As discussed in (Perko and McLaughlin 2002), the self concept of a student influences the way in which that student will develop academically in a learning environment, like in schools among other learning situations. Those students, who have a positive self concept, are able to achieve positive results in their performance. This is because, they are able to transform their capabilities to success situations, as compared to the ones that tend to think that situations are very hard for them, and so will not be able to achieve anything.
According to (Stenson 2006), most students that have any form of disability tend to have a low sense of self concept which severely affects their performance results. especially in academics and the social lifestyle. The reason for this is that, they grade themselves in a way that they tend to think that, those without disabilities are better than them in any manner. The low sense of self concept reduces personal confidence in students with disabilities, in handling real life situations for the students with disabilities.
This will make them not to attempt to make any trials, in new things that can improve on their academic skills like in reading (Perko and McLaughlin 2002). As discussed in (Stenson 2006) there are many ways schools can use to boost the self concept of the students with special educations needs, which will in turn lead to improved performance results in various subjects, that are being offered in schools like the reading skills.
One of the ways, which have been suggested in this research, is for the teachers can be encouraged to give responses to all the assignments that the students have worked and each response should be focused on the specific student. Such responses should also be made of out of good faith as it will enable the student to make necessary improvements that can improve the performance standards (Falk et al 2003). On the other hand the assignments (Flores et al 2006) that the students are assigned to carry out must be reasonably hard to an extent that they will require the student to think critically in providing the required solutions.
This will help improve the thinking capability of students with special needs so as to get high performance results. The students should also be encouraged to undertake various tasks up to their point of completion. This will enable the students to be able to focus on hard work within a given allowance of time (Perko and McLaughlin 2002). In addition to that (Stopar 2003) suggests that, in order to improve the self concept of the students with special needs in education, there is need for the teachers to show their students how to use various learning materials especially those that the student find difficulty in using.
This will help them to link the different achievements that they will receive to the efforts that they have made to achieve such achievements in return be able to accept that they can also be able to achieve. Such kind of support should be given at intervals, so as to allow them develop their skills by understanding well each structure in their learning process (Perko and McLaughlin 2002). Teaching models Scaffolding As discussed in (Perko and McLaughlin 2002) scaffolding is a method in which the teachers assist the students to finish their assignments, and other academic work until the students are able to do the tasks on their own.
The technique involves many activities some of which involve the issues to do with vocabulary, and other areas where students find difficulty in carrying on their academic work. The other activities include those, which will assist the students to understand the contents of the reading materials, which they use in their learning activities in schools. These activities include for example making short notes, when the learning process is taking place and using graphic organizers. These can enable the students to relate their course contents to the real life situations which are very important at building their memory capacity (Stenson 2006).
In some situations (Stenson 2006), the students can be required to use matrixes, which will help them to identify the main points of focus of a reading material. The instructor will use these tools, by giving the students a demonstration of how the matrix is to be filled, then he or she will allow the students to complete the matrix and each student will be required to finish the matrix up to its conclusion. At the end of the exercise, the instructor can give the recommendations of what is supposed to be included in the matrix.
According to researches that have been conducted in scaffolding as presented in (Stenson 2006) scaffolding techniques helps the students with special education needs, to improve on their reading skills by over fifteen percentages as compared to those that do not apply this technique. This learning technique is usually recommended to students with special education needs, because it has the a high probability of developing their decoding skills as well as the comprehension abilities these being the major areas in which they have problems in reading courses(Stenson 2006) .
The scaffolding model (Wolf et al 2006) advocates for teachers to hint their students with special needs on the reading material, which they will read before the reading process begins. This will enable the students to understand, what the reading material is talking about and then they can easily connect the information that is included in the passages, which follow each other. In carrying out these exercises the teacher will develop the comprehension skills of his or her students to greater levels (Stenson 2006).
The scaffolding technique (Huang and Wheeler 2006) also helps the students to benefit from the academic support of their teachers, in the areas that they find difficulties to handle. This is of great importance to the students as they will learn on how they can carry various academic tasks with minimum assistance from their teachers, and eventually be at an advantage like the students, who are not faced with disabilities (Stenson 2006). Graphic organizers
As discussed in (Stenson 2006), the graphical organizer is a technique, which uses mathematical tools like boxes, and lines among others tools to group information, and rank it at the same time in a way that the students can be able to remember more information. The high capacity of remembering information is of great importance to the students, because it will enable them to progress in reading courses (Stopar 2003). In the cases (Gerken et al 2006) where they the graphic organizers have been used for all types of students, research has shown that the technique has improved the performance of students in reading.
In such cases, concept maps are made so as to improve on the traditional ways of reading, like the use of worksheets besides the teacher being engaged in a class discussion with his or her students. The major reason for the improved performance is because, the students in using graphic organizers are able to understand many concepts in a piece of reading material, which will enhance the high retention capacity of the student. This is enabled by being able to focus on the major points of concern in a learning material (Stenson 2006).
As discussed in (Stenson 2006), the students with special education needs who used graphic organizers in all the researches that were conducted on the effectiveness of graphic organizers were able to achieve high results in reading when they were compared with those their instructors used the traditional methods in enhancing their reading skills. The performance results are even higher, when a variety of tools are used in the graphical organizers technique. Such tools like the semantic organizers, and well framed course outlines, bring out the meaning of then reading material.
This will enable the student to understand easily the topic, without misunderstanding the main points of focus, and the minor points that are used to explain the main points (Faber 2006). From the researches, the graphic organizers, enables all the students in relating the ideas in the learning material. This minimizes the confusions that the student with special education needs face, in trying to connect ideas that are displayed in the reading materials. The technique can be more effective in situations where the main points are organized in their order of importance.
The main ideas then have to be supported by the summary of what they involve, and the relationship that exists with the other main points in the theme of the learning material (Stenson 2006). In such situations as discussed in (Stenson 2006) the students were able to improve their knowledge skills, when they could be encouraged to write brief essays, about the different points in the main topics in the area of study. As summarized in (Stenson 2006) the graphic organizers positions itself as one of the best tools, which can be used to carry out pre- reading of the learning materials.
This is because, once pre-reading has been carried out; the teacher has a chance to make clear the various components of the reading material. This will give the students a chance to connect the ideas in the material of study. To make the graphic organizers more effective, the teachers and other instructors are encouraged to use open ended questions, which will enable the students to construct the ideas in the subject material and demonstrate the relationship that exists between the main points in the reading material.
The ideas of this research paper are supported by the research study, which was carried of at Austin Road Middle School in Texas. This research involved the programs and methods that can be used by teachers and instructors, in various schools to improve on the reading skills of their students especially those that were under the special education department (Stenson 2006). Student characteristics
As discussed in (Huang and Wheeler 2006) there are certain students’ characteristics, which when displayed by the students, the instructor will be able to know, whether or not his or her students are making progress in their reading skills. Some of the characteristics, which the students will display, include the improvements on the way the students are able to pronounce the words in the reading materials. The student improvements can also be assessed, in the way the students are able to name the various letters in the alphabetic order.
This is most applied for the students in low levels of education, like the elementary schools. For the other grades, the ability with which the students are able to work on their academic assignments and the reading fluency can be used to check on the improvements that they are making in improving the reading skills especially after the required techniques have been applied within the required specifications (Perko and McLaughlin 2002). Conclusion It is very important for the teachers and other instructors to enhance high self efficacy for their students, as it is the gateway to the improvements in the students’ academic work.
Some of The ways that can be used to improve the self concept are discussed in the main text of this research paper. The reason being reading skills initiate the overall academic performance of the students with special needs, as the various schools and districts strive to comply with the law on No Child Left Behind policy. Word count 2250 References Ann X. Huang, J. J. Wheeler (2006). Effective interventions for individuals with high functional Autism. International journal of special education. 21(3), p165-175. Brenton Stenson (2006).
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Mojca l. Stopar (2003). Good and poor readers- what can we learn from the structural analysis of their reading comprehension. International journal of special education. 18(2), p37-51. Sheri Perko, McLaughlin (2002). Autism: Characteristics, causes and some educational interventions. International journal of special education. 17(2), p59-68. Tera L. Wolf, T. F. McLaughlin, R. L. Williams (2006). Time out interventions and strategies: A brief review and recommendations. International journal of special education. 21(3), p22-29.
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