Malika Romine

Factor #3: Unit Goals and Objectives

The pre-assessments were administered and analyzed. The results showed the
instructor that there is a need to review skills taught in the primary elementary level
to her upper elementary students with disabilities in the Life Skills room. February
2015, the Shamokin Area School District special education department was audited
by the state. One of the components of the audit was to check to see if students
were making educational benefit by looking at the students goals and progress
monitoring. The question all special education teachers were asked was, Is it
working? Is it an appropriate goal? Most students are given a standard reading
and/or comprehension goal in their IEPs. After giving the pre-assessment, the
instructor was able realize that students needed more individualized goals for
phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary. Incorporating all of these skills into
a daily routine and lesson plans will help students become stronger readers and
individual goals. The following
PHONEMIC AWARENESS & PHONICS
Based on the pre-assessment the instructors will have to teach the child to read by
starting with phonemic awareness instruction and phonics. Phonemic awareness
is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds-phonemes--in
spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become more aware
of how the sounds in words work. The teacher will have to include listening
activities for the students to distinguish isolated sounds; word, syllable, and
phoneme counting; sound-to-word matching; sounds segmentation; and letter
sound associations. Phonic lessons will combine letter recognition, letter-sounds
correspondence, onset and rime, word study, syllable patterns, and morpheme
structures.
VOCABULARY
Tracking vocabulary is a challenge. The best way teach students a vocabulary
words to students is to give them as much exposure to new words as possible.
Word/definition diagrams, reading materials with rich vocabulary, context clues,
synonym/antonym matching centers, and decoding strategies will help the students
build a bigger repertoire of words. High-frequency words should be reviewed and
practiced daily. Recognizing and understanding words will help increase the
students fluency and comprehension.
FLUENCY
The teacher has given the DIBELS and DRA assessments and is able to pinpoint and
independent/instructional reading fluency level. Students will have the background
knowledge of phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary plus decoding
strategies to help them during their reading fluency practice. The teacher can
encourage silent reading or buddy reading by having leveled books available for the

students to read. Other programs such as Read Naturally, Six Minutes Solution, and
RTI can be supplement programs the teacher. Study Island and MobyMax are online
resources that are geared to establish a childs instructional level and track
students progress.

GUIDED READING: BALANCED LITERACY

The final goal will be to incorporate a guided reading balanced literacy approach.
The DRA assessment data showed the teacher that the students needed to build his
background knowledge, increase fluency, and improve comprehension. The teacher
will have to start with a high level of support. Interactive read alouds and shared
reading would be the best way to teach children who are showing low score on their
DRA assessments. The teacher will model think-alouds and teach children how to
problem solve to decode or define words by using context clues. Visuals must be
present whether the teacher is using a big book or the children have their own copy
of the reader. The teacher should encourage the students and the parents to read
with their child daily, discuss reading strategies, talk about the story, highlighting
main points, and high frequency word practice. All of the above skills will be
incorporated into the daily lesson. The teacher will have the students pick out
words with /b/ sounds in the reading or to look for ing ending on words throughout
the text. If the phonemic awareness and phonics skills are taught separately, the
teacher needs to carryover those skills in the small group or whole class instruction
during guided reading instruction.