Mary's Deficit In The Classroom

Mary is a nine year old student who is currently in third grade. She repeated kindergarten showing difficulties in memorizing her letters and their phonetic sounds. Unfortunately, having her go through the kindergarten curriculum for two years did not show substantial growth in her ability to put words together. Mary qualified for speech therapy in syntax construction by scoring in the low seventies demonstrating difficulty repeating and forming a sentence with given words. German & Newman (2007) found deficits in verbal language effects how a student will read orally. Furthermore, 50% of children with reading disabilities have a deficit in language-based reading, and phonic retrieval. Knowing this information, the classroom, teacher,

Some suggestions given during the ARD meeting was to use a visual edge board that will slant all reading material, is magnetic and has the capability to write on using a dry erase marker. This will enable Mary to take notes on reading material to enhance her understanding of the story. Another difficulty Mary is facing is her cognitive deficit in short term memory. Some recommendations the special education teacher suggested was to break up instruction into smaller portions, shorten assignments, and keep a notebook with definitions and examples of ways to complete classroom material properly. In addition, a great tool for learning two hundred and twenty dolch sight words is using Picture Me Reading flashcards allowing visual pictures to easily memorize common words. Furthermore, since Mary seems to retain information read to her so she would benefit from choral reading, taped text, and echo reading with a peers. Finally, Dr. Timothy Rasinski suggests that reading poems, songs, and reading theater with the printed text builds