I need to respond to the comment "everyone would benefit from explicit instruction...".  My daughter born in 1969 was a "gifted" student. I didn't teach her to read with phonics because I didn't know how to do so.  She learned to read by being read to and could read simple books by age 5. She didn't learn phonics in school because at that time "psycho-linguistic" methods were employed to teach reading. Psycholinguistics is just another name for whole language. Although she could read anything she wanted, she could not spell words correctly. My teacher training set me up to not correct spelling mistakes because "I didn't want to wreck her creativity."  Her "creative spelling" made her look uneducated. Finally at age 17 she did a phonics spelling program and learned the "rules" that I didn't teach her at age 6.  She is now 40 years old and has to write a lot in her executive position at the Community Learning Center.  She would certainly agree that
 "everyone would benefit from explicit instruction...".  Even the very good readers who are often very bad spellers.
Sharon Hillestad
Director of Tutors at the Community Learning Center
Clearwater, Fl
State Rep of the National Right To Read Fnd.  www.nrrf.org 

--- On Wed, 11/4/09, Betsy <bsg36 at comcast.net> wrote:

From: Betsy <bsg36 at comcast.net>
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4241] Re: Response to Intervention (RTI)
To: "'The Learning Disabilities Discussion List'" <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 4:56 AM




 
 

 

 

 

 

 







Thank you, Maureen!!  I will second
that.  Let’s call it Universal Design.  EVERYONE would benefit
from explicit instruction and keep many from “falling” – “failing”.
 ---Whatever we want to call it.  Check out the Reading Assist
Program in Delaware 
that trains volunteers in explicit instruction to go into the classrooms and
catch those who are “failing”. My friend, Ginger Biasotto, started
this program because she had a severely dyslexic son. Read her story, Educating
Andrew: A Promise Fulfilled. ISBN 1-4241-0171-9. 

   

Betsy Gauss 

Lake
 Wales Literacy Council 

Lake
 Wales, FL 33853 

   









From:
learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Maureen Carro

Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009
8:12 PM

To: The Learning Disabilities
Discussion List

Subject: [LearningDisabilities
4237] Re: Response to Intervention (RTI) 



   



Here is what I thought the "tiered system" of "Response
to Intervention" entailed: 





   





1.  The classroom teacher notices the student is struggling in the
classroom. 





2.  More specialized classroom help is provided as the first
intervention. 





3. If the student continues to struggle in spite of the classroom
intervention, he/she is referred to more intense, small group instruction. 





4.  If the student still fails to "respond to the
intervention", they  are referred to one-on-one, very specialized,
intense, instruction.   





   





My question:  Is this "fourth tier" struggling student
not feeling like he/she is failing???!!   It seems to me that they now
have to "fail" three times to get the right help!   





   





For heaven's sake..... why not give every child the direct explicit
instruction in the structure of the language..... starting with the alphabetic
principle, moving to syllables, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and
discourse.... that is needed to successfully read and comprehend text in the
first place!   





   





   











Maureen Carro, MS,
ET 





Academic Learning
Solutions 





Alamo,
 CA  





mcarro at lmi.net 





   





   



   





On Nov 3, 2009, at 2:17 AM, HKerr at aol.com
wrote: 







 





The RTI initiative was originally, I
believe, aimed precisely at adopting a different approach than the deficit one.
The idea was originally, according to articles by people like Jack Fletcher,
specifically to enable the whole environment to be considered and for us to
move away from the assumption that 'failure' must mean deficit; that we must
always seek to find a fault in the student, even his neurology. Recent
literature seems to show that RTI has been subverted and is now being
deployed as a measure which is used to 'identify, a 'deficit' in exactly the
way the discredited discrepancy criterion was in the bad old days. For
discrepancy read RTI, in other words, which had not been the point originally,
as I understood it. 





  





Hugo



at: http://www.hugokerr.info



"We're
here to help each other get through this thing - whatever it might be."
(Kurt Vonnegut)  





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