Making Secondary Literacy

Accessible to ALL

After Reading and Reflecting on the article titled, "Making Secondary Literature Accessible for All," I feel very informed and enlightened and I can't help but think about my own personal experiences as a substitute teacher and parent. How can we help children achieve their goals if we are not willing to take the time to look at each individual child and ask, "What needs do my students have in literacy?" Knowing this information about each child will allow us to use the appreciate measures, tools and resources to provide the best possible instruction for our students. It's impossible to effectively help students if we fail to ask ourselves this question. This question is a critical component of ensuring our students are effectively learning and achieving their goals. However, knowing the area of need and being able to provide the necessary support whether physical, visual, or social will eliminate so much stress from both the student and the educator. 

The Authors, Christy Palmquist an Heather Prenevost, stresses the importance of paying close attention to the amount of scaffolding support we are giving our students. We want to keep in mind that too much support could create laziness and create dependent learners. These students will always depend on high levels of teacher support and fail to take risks where they would be able to engage in critical thinking to discover and learn new things independently. On the other hand, we don't want to frustrate our students with work tasks that are too difficult by not providing an adequate amount of supports. Educators must be very careful to provide the right amount of support that will help students learn and achieve their goals but at the same time encourage them to become independent thinkers and learners. 

Palmquist and Prenevost also make reference to the National Reading Panel's Five Pillars of reading (Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension). They use these pillars as a guide to address the various strategies and tools accessible to aid students of different abilities. They compare the Pillars of reading to the Pillars that support the roof of a house which creates a very strong visual representation for the readers. As we are well aware, a roof requires all pillars of support in order to provide a solid and stable structure. With one or two missing the house structure is unstable. The same is true for a child learning to read. In order for students to become successful and independent readers, it's crucial that we address all 5 pillars of the reading process in order to support the learning process. 

In addition, I feel that this article was a great read. As educators, we need to be aware and sympathetic to the various demands, learning styles, abilities, and realize that each and every child is unique and has different levels of ability. We need to start by looking at each individual child to assess where each child needs support. The authors provide effective strategies, techniques, and support that we incorporate in our classrooms to provide the best possible level of support so that each and every child will become confident and successful independent learners. 

As we are aware, Assistive Technology is extremely useful and important to assist students who have learning impairments. After listening to Tylers story in the last class, it was quite intriguing, motivating, and truly inspirational to see how Technology supported his disability and enabled him to grow and learn effectively in the classroom setting. Tyler's story touched my heart!! Despite the challenges Tyler was able to stay focused, determined, and motivated to press on to achieve his goals. Tyler was obviously given adequate and effective supports which enabled him to keep pursuing his goals in life. It was clearly evident that hard work, determination, and the proper amount of supports allowed Tyler the opportunity to share his wonderful story today and most importantly feel proud of the young intelligent man he has become!!!