During my Action Research Project, I was able to really talk to my collaborating teacher on what it meant for her to work on sight words using a multi-modal instructional approach. This is a summary of what she said about her experience.
In regards to working on the sight words in various ways has really helped my collaborating teacher to bond better with her student. She noticed up to this point that he has been more distant and not really interacting with her, but using different activities and needing to interact with his teacher more and has opened him up and he has started smiling, and interacting, and wanting to play the different games and do the activities. She notes that he loves to play sight word rummy, even to the point of taking it home and working on the words there, which has been rare since this is the only homework he has independently completed all year. Even though we want our students to learn and to grow, sometimes it's not in an academic way. Sometimes it's through social-emotional and sometimes it's both. I feel that my collaborating teacher was shown that academics isn't always in the forefront, and that bonding, and finding ways to reach a student can be just as important as them learning to read a sight word.
0 Comments
Since I am a Preschool Itinerant Teacher who works with students ages 3-5, it is very important to me to find ways to engage my students. I only have them for such a small amount of time, and I want to be sure that the time I do have with them is meaningful, teachable, and engaging. One way of instruction is the use of instruction through touch. Flewitt, Kucirkova, and Messer (2014) was able to do a study with students who had disabilities and they wanted to research whether using touch (using an iPAd) is a good way to teach literacy. One of the teachers in the study, I believe touched on the importance of trying to find ways to teach a standard, or a unit in a variety of ways. She mentions that "young children are often encouraged to trace letters in tactile media such as sand, paint or foam, in the belief that the action of tracing directs children’s attention to a letter, which
facilitates learning. With the iPad, tactile experience combined powerfully with immediate reward, such as a letter displayed on the screen or read aloud by a pre- recorded voice, which enhanced children’s enjoyment and engagement." (p. 112) Even though iPads shouldn't be used as the only way to teach a subject (such as the alphabet, sequencing, etc.), it can be a vital avenue to help my students to use a different sensory mode to help them communicate and show understanding when they may not be able to do it any other way. Reference: Flewitt, R., Kucirkova, N., & Messer, D. (2014). Touching the virtual, touching the real: iPads and enabling literacy for students experiencing disability. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. (37)2, 107-116. |
|