sutton062

I think many of us can agree that reading is a huge part of a child's education. There are so many different programs out there and all have their pros and cons but the one thing I can say across the board is that allowing students to read independently MUST be included. Not only reading independently but allowing students to choose the texts that they want to read, rather than being told what to read. That's right, even our students with the most significant needs should participate in self selected/ independent reading. It may look different but giving them the opportunity is what should be occurring in classrooms. Students in my room get 20-30 minutes everyday for self selected reading. During this time I do not tell my students what to read and the only instruction happening is behavior/classroom management. I even encourage the staff in my room to bring their own reading material as this is a great way to model for the students. We start the year off trying to do this for ...

Reading instruction can often times be difficult in a special education class. There are so many fun and engaging reading lessons posted on Pinterest and teacher blogs but they are mostly geared towards the general education population. Let's face it...as much as we try, those don't work in our classrooms. When I read a lesson I think, if I do that Johnny will walk away, if I do this Susie will act out etc. Now don't get me wrong, I do not limit my students and I challenge them daily, but I have had to find different ways of doing this. I teach reading two times a day.  The students in my first group range in reading levels A- I (Fountas and Pinnell) and my students in the second group are still working on emerging reading skills. For this post I am going to focus on how I structure my reading block for the first group. During this time I have 9 students and 2 para professionals. Here is a picture of my schedule break down during this time. My paras run the table work cente...