Barbara Laster

Differentiated Instruction: Making Informed Teacher Decisions.

This article addresses approaches to differentiating instruction to meet the needs of students whose literacy needs, interests, and strengths vary widely. This article was designed to support classroom teachers who understand the importance of differentiating instruction, but are unsure of how best to design and implement differentiation within the parameters of the classroom. The article begins by defining differentiated instruction and discussing its importance, including the role of differentiation with respect to diversity and with respect to Response to Intervention (RTI). The remainder of the article describes in detail two examples of differentiated instruction in classroom contexts. Each example is followed by a discussion of the research and decision-making underlying the teachers approach to differentiation. The article concludes with common characteristics of effective differentiation.

A Historical View of Student Learning and Teacher Development in Reading Clinics

Purpose – This historical perspective highlights the evolution of reading clinics (also called literacy labs, centers, etc.) from medical-type clinics to instructional powerhouses for struggling readers. Of particular interest, also, is the development of teacher expertise while participating in reading clinics, particularly in the areas of reflection, a critical view of assessments, and using assessment to inform instruction. Furthermore, this chapter traces the history of research that has come out of reading clinics. Design/Methodology/Approach – A brief history of reading clinics since the 1920s is followed by a deep examination of some of the themes that have shaped more recent reading clinics and research that has emerged from the clinics: assessment, mandates, teacher reflection, and twenty-first Century Literacies. Practical implications – This chapter offers key information for stakeholders who are designing, establishing, or refining a reading clinic, either university-based or K-12 school-based. Social implications – Struggling readers and writers deserve and need experiences that help them acquire literacy skills, including reading and writing for twenty-first century purposes. Teachers need support as they navigate mandates from educational policy-makers, enhance their skills as literacy leaders and literacy coaches, and reflect on best practices.

Taking Technology From Clinic to Classroom

Purpose – This chapter explores how teachers and learners can use technology in powerful and agentive ways for literacy development. It presents information about communication technologies (ICTs) that can be used to develop student literacy skills in each of the major areas of literacy learning: emergent to beginning literacy, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. It also addresses how assistive technologies fit within a literacy development program. Design/methodology/approach – A brief overview of the breadth of technologies available for instructional uses and the pedagogical perspective used is followed with specific ideas for free or inexpensive technologies that can be used to address literacy development. Additionally, websites for professional reviews of software are included to help readers learn about emerging technologies and software applications as they become available. Practical implications – Specific ideas for instruction that addresses student literacy development while integrating 21st-century technology are included. Teachers and teacher educators will find immediately useful, practical ideas for boosting literacy learning with technologies matched to specific literacy needs such as sight words, fluency, and comprehension. Social implications – Struggling readers and writers deserve and need experiences that help them acquire technology skills. Too often these students are excluded from technology activities because they are participating in intervention instruction or do not finish seatwork and have no available “free” or “choice” time. Technology can be a powerfully motivating tool for literacy instruction. It can also provide engaging practice, targeted specifically at the learning needs and developmental stage of the literacy learner. Most importantly, struggling readers and writers need exposure to the academic possibilities of technology.

Psychosemiotics and Libraries: Identifying Signways in Library Informational Guides, Games, and Tutorials.

Tutorials and digital learning objects provide librarians a quick, concise mechanism for delivering information and training on a wide range of library topics. The semiotic theory promoted by Charles Sanders Peirce (Wiener, 1958) and Howard Smith (2005) contains implications for enhancing the effectiveness of library tutorials through the interrelationship of signs and literacies. This paper provides examples of instruction and information delivery through various signways in tutorials and gaming devices from academic library Web sites, as well as PRIMO and the Information Literacy Resource Bank. Foremost, librarians can use these examples to design their digital guides and tutorials to deliver information through multiple signways, thereby enhancing students’ meaning-making.

Using Video for Teacher Reflection: Reading Clinics in Action

The study reported in this chapter grew out of a decade of conversations among reading teacher educators about the use of video in facilitating teacher reflection and instructional improvement in university-based reading clinic courses. The data reported here were gathered from two university sites in the United States. Using a formative experiment methodology, we designed a study to better understand the ways in which reflective processes might be mediated by the use of video technology. The study had three phases of inquiry. We worked to develop a common reflection process and supportive protocols for use in our courses. We designed, trialed, and iteratively redesigned video reflection assignments and prompts, and we sought teacher feedback. We also examined teachers’ responses in course assignments as they reflected on their own teaching and learning. Our goal was to create a video assignment that would encourage teachers toward deeper, more thoughtful reflection. Our final development exercise was to design a set of criteria, a rubric of sorts that we could use in conjunction with the assignment prompts to help teachers self-reflect and to facilitate peer-to-peer and instructor feedback. While we discuss our experiences with factors that can impact the effective use of video-prompted reflection, our belief is that others will find our work useful and will be encouraged to use video as a way to foster teachers’ reflective thinking.

Guatemala and United States Partnership Renews Teaching and Learning

Abstract Through a retrospective, reflective, descriptive methodology, three researchers explore their experiences as teacher educators. Interactions with a variety of educational stakeholders in Guatemala resulted in new perspectives about culture, language, instruction, literacy materials, and access. Even though each researcher had a distinct background, global experience, and teaching expertise, they collaborated for data analysis and describe how their new international perspectives renews teaching and subsequently invigorates the learning of students back in the institutions of higher learning in the United States. All three brought their new learning into their higher education venues back in the United States to better prepare literacy educators for today’s global world.