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The Foundations of Success
So the first thing I see is the majority of people are looking for ways to improve progress for their most vulnerable students. We also have some people that are curious about the science and then we have some that are just wanting to keep their professional development updated so we welcome all of you and hopefully I’ll be able to address all of your questions and concerns during this time together.
First of all, we know in America and I would venture to guess across the world that we have a lot of struggling learners right now. Many times, we see minimal or even non-existent reading and learning gains in our students and it’s difficult for many student’s goals and districts to even change their approaches to intervention each year. It’s hard to make changes, it’s hard for us as educators and hard for the institutions of schools to make changes that are needed.
So, let’s look at some of the things that science tells us about our students and us as educators even perhaps.
So, the first thing I would venture to guess the reason you’re on this webinar today is that your goal as an educator is to help your students to be successful in these content areas. You want them to be lifelong learners and you want them to be successful. So, this content is going to be the main focus for our classrooms across the world.
But in order for our students to be successful in those content areas they have to be good readers. In America, the math assessment that students take is essentially a reading assessment because almost every problem on that math test is a word problem or a story problem. So, if the students can’t read it, they’re not going to be able to accomplish the task successfully.
And if they can’t read, the odds are pretty good that they have underlying language issues as well because reading stands on the shoulders of language. And if they’re struggling in those areas we can pretty much bet there are some cognitive skills wrapped into that as well. And when I talk about cognitive skills I’m talking about memory, attention, processing and sequencing the ability for students to stay focused long enough to really understand what is being said in the classroom, what the task is, what they’re reading perhaps and then hang on to that information long enough to do something with it. So, if we can develop their cognitive skills those essential learning skills for all of us, build their language and reading skills we’re going to provide a strong foundation for our students and once we do that, then everything else falls into place. They can be successful in those content areas. So, let’s jump in and look at some information on different groups of students……
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