A student with a Learning Disability may face a variety of obstacles depending upon their own individual strengths and needs. Many students find that they have incredibly creative and elaborate ideas for their writing but struggle to organize their thoughts on paper. Some students struggle with spelling. Students may have brilliant ideas that are forgotten by the time they are ready to put them down on paper. Some students have creative thoughts and ideas but lack the vocabulary to describe them. All students develop their writing abilities at their own pace and require specific supports to meet their unique needs.
Recently at Sagonaska, grade 7/8 teachers used a number of specific supports and accommodations to teach their students how to write newspaper articles. Here are some teaching supports and accommodations provided over the course of this unit:
· Mentor Texts – Students read a mentor text and assess it using a success criteria checklist to gain an understanding of all the components necessary for an effective newspaper article.
· Comprehension words- new vocabulary lists (5-6 words) introduced gradually every lesson and can be continuously reviewed by students on classroom walls.
· Collaboration- brainstorming with peers with a similar opinion on a topic. Groups would use a graphic organizer to create an outline of an article, then create a shared writing piece.
· Graphic organizers-
· Structured templates – Chunking each part of the news article into manageable tasks to complete one lesson at a time.
Other structured templates to support 'Getting quotes' and 'Finding synonyms' were created and used for individual lessons.
· Teacher feedback - Teachers would assess drafts of students newspaper articles using the success criteria checklist.
· Assistive Technology- Speech-to-text accessibility features are embedded in each lesson as students transfer their ideas to writing in Google Docs in an efficient, accurate manner. Students could also use text-to-speech accessibility features when editing their work.
Follow-up during the next writing units using similar supports and accommodation can help students with an LD to grow independently in their writing skills.
Here is an example of a grade 7 students insightful news article to culminate this writing unit.
Animals and Communication
By: Reese Myre-Gorham
Buck is telling me he is sad that he did not get his daily treat.
Sudbury Ontario. Photo taken by Reece Myre Gorham.
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I’ve heard so many people say animals do not have emotions, want to know what I say to them. Just because an animal does not show its feelings or emotions the way humans do doesn’t mean they don’t have emotions or feelings at all. Me and my mom are two examples of hundreds of people I know that know that animals feel something.
Animals show emotions in many ways. One way is their tail another way is their ears, their eyes, their facial expressions and how they act. If you treat a animal in an abusive way or don’t give them the love that they want and deserve or do something they do not like,their ears might go down, there eyes might be shaky, they might put their tail between their legs and their body low to the ground and whimper. I have seen it firsthand before walking down the sidewalk or hang out with my cousin she has two dogs and does not treat them properly but I almost always say something if I see animals in pain I feel horrible and I don’t like feeling that way and I know neither do they.
Animals can also show their distress in other ways like physical ways. If an animal is in distress they might stop eating therefore they might become unhealthy and they will start acting a lot different they might start acting aggressive,unplayfall, inactive, skittish and always have their heads down. They might change their ways of life. And I have seen all of it first hand and it’s horribly sad and depressing.
Heather Myre said “If you pay attention to an animal in a loving way then you can understand what they are feeling by the way they show it. And they DO have emotions but you need to learn to see them and how they show it. I feel empathy for animals, when i see that they’re not being treated properly i can see that they’re distressed and unhappy.”
But not just pets, all living animals feel these feelings but show it in different way it’s all about perspective, I feel a lot of empathy for animals but not so much for humans but that’s just my perspective you can have your ways of thinking but that doesn’t mean you can treat animals badly. Just because you can hurt an animal doesn’t mean you have to. But animals don’t just show their feelings if they are sad and depressed. They can show feelings about being happy, scared, excited, confused, weird it out, and many other ways.
