Assignment 9

A language disorder is impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written, and/or other symbol systems. The disorder may involve the form of language, the content of language, and/or the function of language in communication in any combination. In other words, a language disorder may include both comprehension of language and/or language production and includes either written or spoken language.

A reading disorder is a a reading achievement level that is below a person's chronological age and below the level that would be expected for a person's level of intelligence after given age-appropriate education. Oral reading would be characterized by distortions, substitutions, and/or omissions and both oral and silent reading would be characterized by slowness and errors in comprehension.

A writing disorder includes difficulty in one or more of the following writing elements: written composition, spelling, and/or handwriting. Examples: telling/retelling a story, identifying sounds in words, tracing shapes, holding a pencil.

Specific exceptionalities that are often linked with literacy difficulties are: learning disabilities, intellectual disability, autism, hearing/vision impairments, emotional disturbance.

Strategies I use in my classroom include using technology (for students with handwriting difficulties to express their thoughts, for example), giving and getting information activities, giving students responsibility and say in their treatment plans/goals, using materials with larger print, building background knowledge, giving ample time for reading and writing in the classroom (DEAR, journal entry writing), and trying to pick books that interest the students, among others.

Strategies I like and will try from the reading include mediation and bridging as well as expository text strategies. Although we do not have class meetings where we bring up feelings about the students' treatment/difficulties (this is because the kids are already living at a treatment facility and spend almost every free moment they have outside of school working on these exact issues, and I don't want it to become more overwhelming) except in IEP meetings, I like the prompting questions/statements in the mediation/bridging sections of Chapter 7 from the reading. I will try using some of these when necessary. I like the expository text strategies in that they help develop students' comprehension and language production.