Intentions+and+Positions+-+NOTES

Intentions and Positions - NOTES


 * 1. What do you intend to accomplish by means of this design?**
 * ** We intended to a create a resource that will be useful to a broad range of students struggling in the area of grade 8 science due to reading comprehension learning disabilites. We aim to offer several different, research-backed instructional (both in traditional and technology contexts) strategies to help students cope with what can be overwhelming scientific text and vocabulary .**
 * **We will organize our website according lessons of the BC Science 8 Biology Unit. We hope that teachers and students alike could use this site as a tool in the classroom.**
 * **Every lesson will incorporate a different strategy or a variation of a given strategy for various types of learners.**
 * **We want to provide a unit worth of resources for teachers to employ with their students affected by reading comprehension LD.**
 * We intend to provide students and teachers alike with a tool that makes use of differentiated instruction, to improve the text and verbal comprehension of special needs students in the transition years from elementary to high school education
 * The written and visual summarization strategy will specifically provide instruction that will help a student comprehend text, and to reproduce a non-fiction text passage into their own words.
 * Though using semantic feature analysis in Educational Design, I hope to improve the comprehension of both science reading material and vocabulary for adolescence with Learning Disabilities. Improvements would be the result of incorporating visual and interactive learning opportunities through educational media and small group exercises.

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 * 2. What does scholarship in Education have to say about placing value on this particular cluster of goals?**
 * We provide world-class instruction and a rich diversity of engaging programs to inspire success for every student and bring communities together to learn, share and grow . (North Vancouver School District, Learning Services Handbook. off nvsd44.bc.ca)
 * Evidence suggests that there is not enough emphasis in teaching comprehension in schools as Pressley found in 2002 after a yearlong observational study (as cited in Neufeld, 2005 ) that “In general, students were provided with opportunities to practice comprehension strategies, but they were not actually taught the strategies themselves nor the utility value of applying them" (p.1).
 * "students can be taught reading comprehension strategies and that such instruction is effective at improving their understandings of the texts they read" (Neufeld, 2005, p.302).
 * Scholarship in Education values the ability of students to succeed in mainstream tasks and activities, complete formal testing and not require individualized attention or learning strategies as the current system does not have the teaching capacity and adequate tools to do so (as it is financially costly). Modern research in Education is open to new ideas of learning strategies and knowledge building. The movement is away from the formal, top-down approach and focuses more on experiential learning, incorporation of community and the value of individual engagement; it has not been accepted or put into practice in a significant way as the value system has not changed.


 * 3. What might be a counter-argument to placing value on this particular set of outcomes?**
 * **Some students don't like to be singled out in class and be made to do things differently than classmates, even if they do not have the learning capacity for the traditional class methods. Therefore, I propose having all the class using and taking part in our proposed strategies, not just the students with reading comprehension difficulties.**
 * **Many teachers, unfortuneately, balk at the idea of having to create additional resources to support their LD students. At teachers are often overloaded with classsizes and even LD students within the class, they sometimes do not have the time nor expertise to design alternative instructional approaches for this group of students.**
 * Some administrators and teachers may not feel they have the support or time to focus on comprehension and worry that the delivery of the curriculum will suffer
 * Placing value on collaborative teaching/learning strategies such as SFA can be arguable counter-productive. Spending large amounts of time explaining concepts in different ways to reach each individual may not allow for the completion of the Science Unit. Time is consumed through establishing relationship charts, followed by discussion and reflection of the reading, noting vocabulary, referencing dictionary definitions and than having the students provide examples from their life to support in comprehension.


 * 4. How do the stated goals of your project fit, or not, with larger sets of goals (e.g., globalization, a School District position paper, and so on…)?**
 * **I think that can be answered by the our stated goals and the particular quote from the North Vancouver School District Learning Services Handbook above in question 2. I think our goals and NVSD's are fairly aligned.**
 * By focusing on differentiated instruction and on various proven instructional strategies we have positioned our design environment well to teach a variety of different learners.
 * English is a dominant language in academic texts and our design environment globally could be useful for international institutions that teach science in a Canadian, American or International Bachelorette curriculum school.
 * The stated goals of this project fit into the greater scheme of the class in that it recognizes the relevance of interactive learning strategies to improve educational success and design for those with LD in the Education system. In addition, this project provides examples of meaningful ways that students can engage with one another, with their learning materials, and with technology in an ever-changing world. This project also recognizes that education systems are slowly changing, values are changing and discourse within education has presented the need for more individualized and local approaches to education.


 * 5. What is the predominant technology that you will use? Why this technology?**
 * **If time, I hope to have a Technology page which will outline software, internet resources and IPAD apps that aid students with reading comprehension LD.**
 * **With my chosen strategy of graphic organizers, I hope to have a balance of technology and traditional based activities.**
 * The technology that will be used to aid in the instruction of the summarization strategy will make use of computer aided drawing and visual organizing tools to encourage students to locate and reproduce the main idea in the text through written and visual form
 * Some computer-aided software that aids in the production of visual organizers and receives high reviews for usability, cost, and flexibility include, //DrawAnywhere//, //Cacoo//, and //Lovely Charts//.
 * Online comic strip applications that will aid in the task of visualizing the main idea include //MakeBeliefsComix//, and // Toondoo .//
 * The predominant form of technology to be used for this project will be an interactive wiki page where students can create relationship charts based on their unit readings. In addition, students will be able to check the definitions of their associated vocabulary words, and links will take students to sites that support the relationship charts.

References for Tara: Neufeld, P. (2005). Comprehension instruction in content area classes. //Reading Teacher//, v59 n4 p302-312 Dec 2005. 11 pp.  doi: 10.1598/RT.59.4.1/abstract