Joyce Anderson Downing

Promoting Fluency in Adolescents With Reading Difficulties

VOL. 40, NO. 4, MARCH 2005 (PP. 243–246) 243 strategies for addressing fluency in older students with reading difficulties and includes some suggested resources for implementation. All these activities must be conducted in instructional-level text. According to Betts (1954), the instructional level of word recognition accuracy is 95%, or no more than five errors in 100 words. Once students have practiced a passage, their accuracy should approach the independent level: 99%, or no more than one error in 100 words.

Individualized Behavior Contracts

As children, many of us learned &dquo;Grandma’s Law&dquo; before we started school: &dquo;When you finish your vegetables, you may have dessert&dquo; or &dquo;I would love for you to go out and play, just as soon as your toys have been picked up.&dquo; Our grandmothers may not have known much about contingency contracting or the principles of reinforcement, but this common sense technique got most of us to eat vegetables and clean our rooms. Behavior contracts are simply formalized, written versions of this reciprocal agreement adapted to deal with common classroom situations.

Media Centers and Special Education Introduction to the Special Issue

For special educators, a collaborative relationship with the schools library media specialist provides a unique opportunity to level the educational playing field for students with disabilities. When appropriately equipped and managed, the library can empower students to work independently and productively. The library is also potentially a source of educational information about disabilities for students, teachers, and families that can enrich and normalize their experiences. However, little has been published concerning the relationship between special education and libraries or describing best practices in this area. This special topical issue of Intervention in School and Clinic provides an overview of the existing literature, along with concrete strategies for developing, equipping, and operating collaborative library-based programs for students with mild to moderate learning and behavior problems. This article discusses the various roles the media center may play in the lives of students with disabilities, describes the ways in which teachers and library media specialists can collaborate to meet the needs of students with disabilities, and provides an overview of access to library resources from both physical and technological perspectives.

Related Services for Students with Disabilities Introduction to the Special Issue

Since passage of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, professionals and parents have disagreed concerning how to define and implement the related services requirement of the law. Some states have enacted statutes or regulations establishing eligibility criteria; however, many have not. Although a number of due process and court cases have been filed concerning related services as a necessary component of a free and public education to students with disabilities, the narrow and sometimes conflicting outcomes of those cases has failed to provide clear guidance for the field. This article will review the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act definitions of related services, overview types of related services commonly provided in schools, and review legal decisions concerning related services and the research providing support for best practices.

Teaching Mathematics Vocabulary to Diverse Groups

VOL. 43, NO. 2, NOVEMBER 2007 (PP. 121–126) 121 The Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2000) documents the scope and sequence of mathematics to be taught, how it should be taught, and how it should be assessed. According to PSSM, the six principles (i.e., equity, curriculum, teaching, learning, assessment, and technology) are closely related in school mathematics programs (NCTM, 2000): “The development of a curriculum framework, the selection of curriculum materials, the planning of instructional units or lessons, the design of assessments, the assignment of teachers and students to classes, instructional decisions in the classroom” (p. 12) must be customized to ensure high-quality mathematics education. In other words, quality instruction and appropriate assessment are not separate activities. Assessment and instruction should become nearly indistinguishable (NCTM, 1995, 2000; Ohio Department of Education, 2001; Van de Walle, 2004). The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001) requires states to implement statewide accountability systems covering all public schools and students based on state standards in mathematics. It also requires annual testing for all students in Grades 3 through 8. Annual statewide progress objectives must ensure that students reach proficiency within 12 years. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004 aligns closely with NCLB in many ways but most strongly in terms of creating access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. However, changes are needed that focus on outcomes and quality instruction rather than placement of students with disabilities in alternative settings (Truscott, Catanese, & Abrams, 2005). During the last two decades, professional development programs for mathematics teachers have focused on improving the understanding of national and state standards. The focus was to have teachers implement the W H A T W O R K S F O R M E

Influencing Learning Experiences Let's Ask the Students!

VOL. 41, NO. 4, MARCH 2006 (PP. 244–248) For the past two decades, a great deal of research has been conducted on effective instruction and the variables that constitute effective teaching (Wittrock, 1986). This research has been critically important in identifying the things teachers should and should not do to maximize learning for all students (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 2004). As educators, we often read journals and textbooks and attend conferences to hear what the experts have to say regarding the most effective ways to teach students. However, teachers seldom examine how students would characterize their own effective and ineffective learning experiences based on their personal experiences in the classroom. The authors therefore conducted a qualitative study to interview students with learning disabilities and explore their perceptions of effective and ineffective learning experiences. The interviewer asked students to describe their best and worst learning experiences within the classroom setting. Best was defined as “I really learned a Influencing Learning Experiences:

Integrated Processing A Strategy for Working Out Unknown Words

From Helping the Struggling Reader (pp. 307-314), by N. Sundbye and L. McCoy, 1997, Lawrence, KS: Curriculum Solutions, Inc. Copyright 1997 by Curriculum Solutions, Inc. Adapted with permission. Students who are having difficulty with reading need to be taught strategies to help them figure out unknown words while reading. Without an effective strategy, many struggling readers simply guess or use an inefficient method to pronounce unknown words. Some students who are inaccurate readers have a limited knowledge of phonics and apply their phonetic knowledge with no regard to meaning. The result is a loss of understanding about what is being read. Integrated Processing (Sundbye & McCoy, 1997) is a reading strategy for students who have some phonics skills but fail to integrate phonics with context clues for the meaningful pronunciation of unknown words. This strategy can be used to help readers who are hesitant to attempt long words, omit the middles or ends of such words, or sound out and blend words without correcting their