Stephanie gives us some realistic strategies to use in writing interventions, both in the classroom and therapy room. Stephanie emphasizes the importance of ensuring that all students get adequate practice in using writing functionally. All too often students, especially those with significant disabilties, get stuck on activities that focus on form alone, such as tracing. This does not give students access to the broader world of writing.
Category: Literacy
Literacy refers to one’s ability to comprehend written text and produce written text.
Writing Interventions: Writing Disability Simulation (Part 2)
For those of us who always excelled in language related tasks, at school or at work, it can be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a child with a writing disability. This module provides a writing task that allows us to get an idea of what it might be like for our students who struggle with a writing disability. After experiencing a simulation of the struggle our students experience all day, every day, in school hopefully we can be more sympathetic to that struggle and more effective in our planning and support of those students. Read More
Writing Interventions: What Makes Writing So Challenging for our Students? (Part 1)
Writing requires our students to generate ideas, organize/plan, form the letters, remember spelling rules, and then order syntax and sequence in the appropriate manner. Stephanie reminds us that writing requires fine motor skills, executive functioning to plan, organize and pace as well as language skills for vocabulary and grammar. Stephanie asks us to consider where the break down could be occurring for our students and figure out how to support them.
Playlist: Increasing Language Skills for Children from Low Income Backgrounds
This is the entire playlist of 7 videos included in this series. Topics covered range from parent training strategies to tools that can be used in the classroom to increase learning for children from low income backgrounds.
The Achievement Gap: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 1)
Importance of Parent Training in Early Literacy: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 2)
Strategies to Support Emergent Literacy: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 3)
Increasing Literacy in Adolescents: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 4)
Optimizing the Learning Environment: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 5)
Contextualize Language for Learning: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 6)
Increasing Executive Functioning: Increasing Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds: (Part 7)
Increasing Executive Functioning: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 7)
Students and families from low-income backgrounds are at greater risk for stress, illness and other factors that make it difficult to be ready for learning in the class environment. For some students, the difference in expectations between home and school can be so drastic that it causes a type of culture shock. How can we ease this transition so that students are ready to learn? We can do this by explicitly teaching and explaining expectations, providing predictable routines, model and teach ways to express frustration and set daily, weekly and yearly goals. Find the other modules in this series below: Read More
The Achievement Gap: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 1)
Stephanie Downey Toledo defines the achievment gap: the disparity in educational quality certain students experience compared to others. She goes on to explain why the achievement gap matters, including the impact the achievement gap has on individual students, communities and society. Find the other modules in this series below: Read More
Increasing Literacy in Adolescents: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 4)
Students from low income backgrounds are especially vulnerable to falling behind their literacy development as they become adolescents and move into the upper grades. As vocabulary and content increases in complexity, students without adequate foundational skills begin to experience more struggle and frustration with grade level material. It can be particularly difficult to motivate adolescent students, so Stephanie reminds us to be sympathetic to the challenges our students face and provides strategies to motivate and support adolescent readers. Find the rest of the modules from this series below: Read More
Strategies to Support Emergent Literacy: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 3)
Children from low income backgrounds can be at risk for difficulty with both print awareness and phonological awareness, the foundations of emergent literacy. Intervention consisting of explicit instruction in phonological awareness just two times a week for half an hour demonstrated effectiveness. Stephanie provides strategies that providers and parents alike can use with children from low income background to support emergent literacy. Find the other modules in this series below: Read More
