Motivating Students Who Encounter Difficulties in Learning
This article addresses the way in which educators can foster the academic motivation of students who encounter difficulties in learning.
Using the “Road to Reading Infographic” to Guide Assessment of and Intervention for Foundational Literacy Skills
The Road to Reading infographic was designed to provide an easy-to-follow visual overview of the developmental sequence in which foundational literacy skills are acquired in students.
Building Oral Language Skills through Classroom Instruction: Six High-Yield Strategies to Borrow from the Clinic
This article provides a number of high leverage strategies to target oral language skills that can be adapted for classroom instruction.
Students with Service Animals: 10 Things to Know as a Teaching Professional
What is your role, as a member of the educational team, if a student brings a service animal to school? Why might such an animal be needed? This article is intended to provide the tools needed to understand the important role such an animal plays in the life of a student with a disability, using research on the subject.
Using the Response to Intervention (RTI) Model to Develop Reading Fluency in Grade 2 Students
Teachers devote a lot of energy to teaching students to become competent readers, which is even more challenging in the inclusive classroom where some students have reading difficulties. This article examines the efficacy of a teaching activity program designed and tested in the three tiers of the Response to Intervention (RTI) model.
Activated Learning for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Mainstream, Whole-Class, Executive Function Intervention that is Necessary for Some and Good for All
“Activated Learning” (AL), also called the “EFs2theRescue Pedagogy” in Guare and Dawson’s 3rd edition of Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, is an adaptive executive function (EF) intervention that aims to facilitate high-impact teaching and learning that is necessary for some and good for all in typical classrooms. AL is a self-regulated learning pedagogy that, among other benefits, allows teachers to support students with learning disabilities (LDs) as part of their everyday teaching. It was developed in 2014 by a special education teacher (the author) and has been championed by hundreds of educators in several school boards in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.
Learning to Read: The Importance of Both Phonological and Morphological Approaches
One of the main reading difficulties people with LDs have is in decoding printed words. People without LDs often use a phonics approach to sound out unfamiliar words but that does not work as well for many people with LDs who have difficulty in phonological processing – that is, in hearing the different sounds in words. They may also have difficulty associating sounds with letters (Lyon, 1995). This, in turn, interferes not only with the ability to sound out unfamiliar words but it also strongly affects spelling – for how could someone spell a word accurately when they do not hear all of the sounds in the word?
Effective Behaviour Management for Students with LDs and Behavioural Disorders
Behavioural disorders, particularly those of the externalized type[1], and learning disabilities often occur together. Indeed, the comorbidity between these two types of disorders in students was identified more than 20 years ago (Hinshaw, 1992). More specifically, empirical studies have shown that 75% of students with learning disabilities also lack social skills (Lane, Gresham, & O’Shaughnessy, 2002; National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, 2008).
Teaching Fractions: a Few Cautionary Notes
In this article, we seek to understand the errors that students make. We offer a number of cautionary notes for creating activities for the acquisition of this mathematical concept. The errors explored in this article come out of research involving students between the ages of 9 years and 12 years, at the moment when they displayed reactions of avoidance, worry or anxiety (DeBlois and Bélanger, 2016, DeBlois, 2014).
All Students can Read to Learn Science!
For today’s students to participate in tomorrow’s decision-making, it is imperative that they possess the skills to be mobile and adept at reading, writing, and oral communication in science (Krajick & Sutherland, 2010; Pearson et al., 2010). Even though only some students will pursue careers in science, all will engage in reading about science during their lifetime. So, all students need to ‘read to learn’ in science!