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Since my goal is to be a special education teacher I figure I'd make that the focus of my article search. This particular article is meaningful because it lists specific strategies to help the student with a reading disability. The first strategy listed is to encourage reading by finding reading material that the student enjoys. Reading material they want to read will help to improve reading comprehension and fluency because the student won't feel forced to read something they are not interested in. Keeping a graph of the student's reading progress helps to motivate them to improve their reading skills by making it a challenge. Also readers who struggle can track with their finger or a ruler in order to keep their place and their focus. Sounding out stumble words is a strategy to use when the student is struggling with a particular word. A strategy that I have never thought to use before is to record the student reading so they are able to listen back and judge their own fluency. For secondary students, have them keep a word journal notebook. They can record the words they get stuck on when reading and then study them. Lastly, using reading games is a great strategy for any age group. Even high school special education students enjoy a game of Scrabble, and playing word games improves their reading skills. The bottom line is to make reading fun for all students, and especially for readers with disabilities.

Nice job pulling out the specific strategies, Wendy.

 http://www.amazon.com/Motivation-Breakthrough-Secrets-Turning-Tuned-Out/dp/0743289617/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1328620537&sr=1-2-catcorr The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child, author Richard Lavoie, is a well written resource guide for teachers who wish to figure out how to motivate their students. Parents can learn from the guide as well, but the author primarily addresses educators who seek to improve relations with their students and figure out how to help them work to potential. Richard Lavoie is a consultant and a lecturer with over thirty years of experience as a teacher and an administrator at special education facilities. He explores strategies and techniques that are proven to inspire children to learn. He outlines strategies that will be most effective in igniting the interest and eagerness of kids, especially given their different needs. He outlines several different ways that children are motivated to do their best work. He teaches of the six Ps to motivate children. Some seek praise; others seek prizes, power, projects, or prestige. Some are people-oriented and are motivated when they work with people. Six different chapters address the various motivating factors and how they can be identified and used in the classroom. Personal accounts from Lavoie's years as a teacher allow us to see how he has put his lessons into practice. I appreciate the way that Lavoie challenges teachers to find out what motivates their students, even those students with special needs or who are classified as difficult. He encourages parents and teachers to work together to spark any child to reach his/her full potential. He covers learned hel

Wendy, it looks like maybe your review got cut off. You can add to it by adding an additional comment.

This sounds like an interesting book, and strategies for inspiring students to learn is always a good thing. I would like to add this book to my professional library. Even though I will not be a special education teacher per se, I have special education students in my classroom. Anything that I can do to help them will be valuable.

This article gives several ideas of activities that can be used to help increase reading comprehension with special education students, but they are designed for different learning styles and, I think, would work well with all students! The article is structured as a simple number for each activity so it's very easy to follow. Ideas suggested here fall into the Bloom's Taxonomy of questions and can be used with picture books, short stories, novels or individualized reading for students of all ages. Many ideas do not involve written answers which work best with students with learning difficulties. The activities listed promote comprehension.

How often do students look up to celebrities, right?  I thought this list was so cool.  If anything hopefully it gets one student interested in a book because their favorite star is too! I feel so special - Tyra, Halle and I have a special bond!  Our favorite teenage book is Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume!!!!!!! p.s. I think Hillary Clinton wussed out.  NO recommendation for teen/adults and Goodnight Moon for your fav childrens book? c'mon Hillary!?! p.p.s.(or is it p.s.s.?) With a soft heart I noticed that Whitney Houston's fav childhood book was the bible. RIP Whitney...

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This site lists a lot of resources for special education teachers ... for help with reading and writing and more.

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With classrooms becoming more and more mainstreamed I thought that this article/website would help general education teacher understand how to create a Behavior Intervention Plan. This text focuses more on kids with autism which I found to be important because of the increased awareness of students with this disability. Student with autism can be a challenge for any teacher to teach. The skills that they usually can be taught are social, daily living, and task skills. One way to help in assisting teachers and the students in doing this is creating behavior intervention plans. With autistic students we need to use special strategies to teach them these skills and the behavior intervention plans provide that strategy. There are several steps that go into the behavior intervention plans that ensure that the students get the most out of the plan. First the teacher will need to record the student's behavior. The behaviors the teacher is looking for are problem behaviors like biting and throwing objects and skill behaviors like language or social skills. Also the teacher will need to record the frequency, duration, and time of these behaviors. Next would be an ABC analysis of the student. The A part means antecedent, what happened before the behavior. The B part would require an analysis of the behavior itself. The C part would be the consequence of the behaviors or what happened after. Following this be choosing a target for the student or goal such as choosing 1-2 skill behaviors and 1 problem behavior to work on. The last few steps include choosing a Right Intervention Strategy for the student with autism. This could include choosing reinforcement such as sensory time, making a structured schedule, and consistent intervention to any issues. In the end you should always continue to analyze the behavior intervention plan.

Journal Writing Every Day: Teachers Say It Really Works! This article lists benefits for journal writing with special education students.

"The Michigan Adolescent Literacy Council, a special interest council under the Michigan Reading Association, is a professional organization for educators genuinely concerned with improving the teaching of literacy to adolescents. Our goal is to provide awareness of the unique needs of adolescent learners, professional development opportunities, and information on the best practices in the teaching of literacy for adolescents."

Lyons, W. & Thompson, S.A. (2011, October). Guided Reading in Inclusive Middle Years Classrooms. Intervention in School and Clinic, 47: 158. Retrieved January 27, 2012, from http://isc.sagepub.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/content/47/3/158.full.pdf This study was interesting, because it focuses on something that I am sure so many teachers struggle with - how to teach students who demonstrate a wide variety/range of ability and needs. This study took a really "rough" socioeconomic level of 4th -8th graders and their teachers, and using guided reading as their main method of instruction DID see an 80% of students advance at least one, if not more levels. This was attributed to the fact that in small guided reading groups teachers could spend more time with small groups of students, targeting individual needs. That was the warm fuzzy. Of course, the part that this article mentions in the end, and would stop most teachers in their tracks before attempting to duplicate this, is that each classroom was equipped with several teachers and teacher assistants to make this work. Additionally, there were many times where the rest of the class NOT consisting of the 3 to 5 students in the guided reading group were supposed to work independently. All in all, every study has its flaws - the interesting thing here is that despite them, students still improved overall.

oops...ok I edited my post and stuck the citation in it...thanks!

Interesting to note some of the different terms used in the Canadian Schools, such as "families living in vulnerable circumstances" and "enhanced funding." Probably akin to our use of "at-risk" and "Title I." You are right, most teachers would "stop in their tracks" with regard to the two teachers. This article refers to an inclusion setting, in which the special ed teacher "pushes in" with the special ed students and co-teaches with the gen ed teacher. I did a NCA QAR visit last spring in a school with 4 or 5 teachers in a grade, and 4 paras in the school. It was either 2nd or 3rd grade. Every day at the designated time, all the paras would go into that pod of the school, and the students would move around to different teachers or paras and everyone got guided reading every day. It requires a shift in thinking and lots of collaboration and cooperation, but it can be done.

This website text is about teachers learning to motivating students during this new era of standards. Student's psychological needs are some of the most important aspects of education. We want to understand why some students come to school prepared to learn while others are not. Why are our dropout rates at the rate they are? With standards on the rise and all of the other factors associated with a student's education coming into play we can be leaving our students at a great risk. Knowing what their needs are can help ease this risk. With this knowing how to motivate students, their need for competence, need for belonging, need for feelings of usefulness, satisfying the need to build optimism, and need for feeling potency can help not only students but schools overall. They are all part of the CBUPO Theory. This is not easy to achieve but it is possible.

This is the cutest website ever! If I taught elementary school, I would use this starfall website. There are different links from the main page that will help guide a young students learning. I looked at the first topic which was about teaching the sounds of the alphabet to students. I loved all the graphics and how the announcer sounded out each letter clearly. Very great tool. Check it out!!!! Starfall.com opened in September of 2002 as a free public service to teach children to read with phonics. Our systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL).

This past week I watched my three year old nephew Brady. We tried out the Starfall website together, and Brady loved it. He knows most of his letters in the alphabet, but he really enjoyed the picutres that came after each letter. Great website and it was wonderful to see Brady so excited to interact with the picutres.

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