Welcome!

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Welcome! 




My name is Mandy, and I am currently in the Reading Specialist Master's program at the University of Oklahoma. The purpose of this blog will be to explore the idea of using web and digital literacies as a tool for intervention with struggling readers. In the posts to follow, I will discuss what research has shown regarding this topic. I will also be designing and implementing a lesson involving this use of digital and web literacies in my 5th grade classroom. I will share my plan, discuss the results, and reflect on the outcome overall. 

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Lesson Implementation Reflection

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Holiday Inquiry Project                I think personal digital inquiry was a perfect choice for my 5th grade students. They have participated in digital inquiry throughout the year, but this allowed them to do so more in depth. Also, since they chose their own topic, they seemed to be more invested in the learning experience. They also seemed very interested in become better researchers on the internet and learning how to do so. To me this framework allowed them to go deeper than simply researching a topic. It allowed them to learn and utilize the skills necessary in being critical researchers.           There are a few drawbacks to this framework. First of all, it takes a lot of preparation. I had briefly previewed each step and lesson for my students, but should have done a more thorough job. Also, some topics were difficult for students to find relevant information on. It was also difficu...
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Most Commonly Seen Struggles and Interventions

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  I have been teaching reading in the intermediate grades for ten years. Every year I see a wide range in reading abilities, however there is generally a common trend. Typically about twenty percent (give or take) of my students struggle with reading comprehension in some way. Usually a small handful of those are, or become, identified with a learning disability or medical diagnosis that contributes to their performance, and receive special services to meet their needs. So what about the other struggling students? These ones we say “fall through the cracks”. Why do they continue to struggle though they are receiving adequate instruction? Furthermore, what can we do as their teacher to intervene? Word Recognition and Fluency A large body of research has suggested the lack of foundational competency in word recognition and phonics knowledge to be a great contributor to deficiency in reading comprehension by third and fourth grade (Rasinski, 2017).  Students who struggle wit...
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