3. The examples and non-linguistic representation help the students find a connection with the word they do not know. The graphic organizer works well for students in special education, because when they use the graphic organizer to reflect during and after reading it is a brief description for them to check their understanding.
4&5. The first implementation of this literacy strategy was October 7th, 2011 during 3rd hour, 9th Grade English. This strategy was used for a ITED Prep reading passage. There were two words; the first word was "we-do together" and the second word was "you-do together." This was used as a pre-reading strategy, during reading the students independently fill out the two boxes:"Where is it used" and "Why is it important." After doing this strategy with all eight boxes, I found that some of the boxes were two complex and the students struggled with the understanding what the boxes were asking and got stuck, and missed the understanding of the word. The second time I implemented it, I used a story we read in class "Most Dangerous Game" I changed the format and what was asked of the students to find. The boxes I took out were "Topic where word is found" and "How it connects with other words." The students did a much better job of doing this as a group, but still needed assistance from me within their small groups; I think this was because the words were very complex and the definitions were hard to understand as well. They still stumbled the graphic organizer box "Why it's important." The third time I implemented the literacy strategy I modified it again, I took out "why it's important" and replaced it with: "use this word in a sentence of your own." I think with all the modifications I finally found something that connects with my students being successful. This graphic organizer helps the student understand the word, and they remember and understand the word when reading it in a text.
6. Jesse Tvrdy observed my class when I used the literacy strategy the 2nd time. Tvrdy agreed that the students struggled with understanding the definition. She also said that when it was group work the students still needed teacher guidance. I learned from observing other teachers that the students were struggling with the same boxes of the graphic organizer, so this supported my decision to modify the graphic organizer.
7. I made the same observations that the other teachers made in my classroom.
8. The third time I implemented the literacy strategy I modified it again, I took out "why it's important" and replaced it with: "use this word in a sentence of your own." I think with all the modifications I finally found something that connects with my students being successful. This graphic organizer helps the student understand the word, and they remember and understand the word when reading it in a text.
9. Now that I have perfected the graphic organizer to meet the needs of my students I feel that I will use this for every story we read in English.
10. No questions, I guess a concern would be: I hope it was ok that I modified the strategy to meet the needs of the students in my pull-out class.
