Teachers can deliberately adjust context and academic demand based on how the student is responding to instruction (Cummins, 1984). If the teacher finds that the students or a student in the small group is not responding to the instruction as intended, the teacher can provide more context such as prompts, realia and practice. On the other hand, if the student is responding well or quickly to the context provided by the teacher, the teacher is able to remove the context and make the assignment more cognitively demanding.
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The teacher gradually releases the learning responsibility from himself or herself to the students. The teacher models the instruction during whole group. The second phase of learning is when the teacher shares the responsibility with the entire class. Next, the teacher assigns an assignment with the same objective to students in small groups. Lastly, the student independently completes the objective via an assignment and or by means of an assessment. This groundwork is based on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (1978). Vygotsky theorized that guided instruction, with an adult, or a more skilled peer, could facilitate a higher level of thinking within the zone.
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Multi-sensory Structured Language is a based off of a school of thought that believes that individuals learn better when they are taught using more than one sense. This is a systematic method in teaching language or vocabulary which has been proven to be effective in teaching reading to students with dyslexia. For example, if a teacher is leading a fluency activity introducing new words, he or she can have the student clap out the syllables of the word. The student will need to listen to and repeat the syllable sounds. They can also write out the word with clapping to make the tactile-memory connection. This theory is derrived from Orton-Gillingham based reading instruction (1937).
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Exposing students to text at their independent reading level and adjusting the material as students master the vocabulary is a best-practice strategy that is known to increase students' reading fluency. In addition, providing the students with feedback as students master words at various grade levels encourages students to keep reading new words. According to the U.S. Department of Education, (2010) this direct instruction combined with online intervention such as Reading Plus works well because the teacher can directly implement fluency checks with students during small-group instruction. This is a streamlined way the teacher can gather pertinent data for the MTSS process in RtI and for his or her own information to inform instruction.
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Repeated Reading is a strategy that is beneficial for proficient and struggling readers alike. According to Levy, Nicholls & Kohen (1993), repeated reading increases fluency and comprehension. When students engage in reading the text more than once, they are able to interact with the text and author. The student's 1st read is to determine the GIST of the text (Who/What/When). Their second read goes deeper to answer and ask questions about what the author is trying to convey. Their final read should consist of making textual connections to another genre of text and aspects of their real life.
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