The article Making Secondary Literacy Accessible for All written by Christy Palmquist and Heather Prenevost discusses various tools and strategies that are effective for a wide range of learners. The tools and strategies talked about in the article include visualizing and verbalizing, thinking reading, vocabulary, and comprehension and retelling. They begin the article by explaining the pillars of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension; and how each of these are used to assess student’s literacy skills. They emphasize that after assessing the students’ literacy and language skills, then consideration needs to be given to the supports needed for each individual student to achieve their goals.
There were several main takeaways that I got from this article. I really liked that they started off with the questions “ How do I meet all of their needs?”, “What curriculum can I use for such a wide variety of kids?”. These are questions that teachers ask themselves multiple times throughout every day. It got my attention because these are questions I that can relate to and made me curious to see if they had any answers to those questions in the article.
I found the paragraph where they discussed Elizabeth Keefe’s book Effective Literacy for Learners with Complex Support Needs to be very thought-provoking. I agree with the statement that it is important to “...develop plans for providing the correct technology tools helps maximize the learning opportunities for each student.” However, I have to bring up the point that Keefe did say it takes time to develop these plans but where are we, as teachers with an already heavy workload, getting the time to develop these plans? It goes back to the amount of support and time we are allotted for prepping.
I found Palmquist and Prenevost’s article to be very well written and gave support to the fact that the needs of students and the use of technology varies with each individual student and teachers need to be cognizant of the appropriate learning tools or each student.
Hi Trista! Thanks for sharing your ideas on the article. I also related to the questions at the beginning of the article and found they were helpful in setting the tone for the information presented. I agree with your statement that it can be hard to find the time to develop individualized plans for our students when teachers and support services are already under supported. Hopefully the tools introduced in the article will help us meet the needs of some of our students!
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