Unlocking Literacy for the

Exceptional Learner

Research has shown three alarming trends in American schools. First, reading and writing skills for most middle school and high school students are on a basic level. Next, those students who can read above a basic level are choosing not to read. Finally, students’ levels of critical thinking continue to decrease. Add to this the fact that as the student population in our nation’s schools continues to become more diverse, many students, especially those who are culturally different, struggle to keep up. Our schools have been given an enormous challenge to provide equal educational opportunity to all students, regardless of the differences in culture and other characteristics.

All children can learn, but not all children can learn in the same way. The demands on teachers are intensifying and the need to reach all students can sometimes seem overwhelming. To address this challenge, all teachers must develop a repertoire of strategies to implement when traditional classroom instruction falls short. The following list of websites is just a small sample of the wealth of information available to those struggling to meet the demands of today’s diverse student population.

Ø Misunderstood Minds

Ø Resource Room

Ø RHL School- Reading Comprehension

Ø SchwabLearning.org – A Parent’s Guide to helping Kids with Learning Differences

Ø Online Directory of ESL Resources

Ø State of the Art – Transforming Ideas for Teaching and Learning

Misunderstood Minds - A companion to the PBS documentary, this site gives a unique look into a variety of learning disabilities. Exercises provide insights for parents and teachers into the difficulties experienced on a daily basis by students with learning disabilities. Learning differences experienced by students and appropriate strategy responses are listed.

The Resource Room – Sue’s Resource Room, updated every two weeks, is dedicated to addressing the needs of students who learn differently. Multisensory approaches to reading, spelling, and math are presented. Articles discussing the teaching of reading and comprehension skills to the middle, secondary, and post-secondary student are featured. Two examples are:

Lowering the Language Barriers in Middle and Secondary School – This is a very good article on the language barriers many children with learning disabilities face when they enter general education classrooms. The difficulties that result and interventions to help are clearly laid out.

Multisensory Vocabulary – Guidelines and Activities – Very practical, real life approach to vocabulary development. Many activities are suggested that can easily adapt to all content areas and levels.

RHL School – Reading Comprehension This site is actually a small part of a larger site, RHL School , which provides free resources for parents and teachers. Numerous worksheets designed to give practice in word coding, making inferences, comprehension, recognizing the main idea, and vocabulary development. These activities are appropriate for struggling middle school readers and can be used throughout the curriculum.

SchwabLearning.org – A Parent’s Guide to Helping Kids with Learning Differences – Parents need to be well informed, active participants in their child’s educational process. This site provides four key topics of interest for parents:

Þ Identifying Learning Differences

Þ Managing Learning Differences

Þ Connecting With Others

Þ My Tools To Plan and Progress

Online Directory of ESL Resources – An online site reference put together by The National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. Megasites provides 18 various sites of interest to ESL teachers and students .

State of the Art – Transforming Ideas for Teaching and Learning – Research has led to an understanding of reading as a strategic process students use to construct meaning from text. This site is a booklet that discusses ten steps to change instruction in order to increase literacy learning for all students. These ten steps reflect many ideas presented in our text: Brozo, W.G., & Simpson, M.L. (1999) Readers, teachers, learners: Expanding literacy across the content areas (3rd Edition). New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.