KNOW your students!!!

This is a common issue for every teacher no matter what the subject may be. You will come across students who are incapable of reading and will require other ways of obtaining the information you teach. Although we all wish the students we get at the beginning of every school year will be up to par on their reading abilities, we do not live in a perfect world.

If you have a student that is incapable of reading and you give periodic assessments which require a substantial amount of reading then the student will most likely do poorly on the assessment. Some students get very anxious when given anything with a large amount of words on the paper; this will also lead to poor grades.

My best advice is to KNOW your students and be able to give appropriate accommodations to everyone, especially those with 504 plans and IEP’s. Know the reading abilities of ALL of your students so you can assist them to the best of your ability. For example, I had some students who had difficulty with “big” words. Therefore, every handout I wrote up I simplified the language or instead of writing a word like ‘submit’ I would say ‘turn in.’ Although this did take a few extra minutes of my time when writing lesson plans and handouts, in the end it made everyone’s lives easier.

If the student requires an aide, this person will be in class with them to further assist the student in any way possible. The aide should be very helpful in making sure the student is not hindered due to their poor reading abilities. Strategies such as reading test questions allowed, page formatting (not putting too many words on one page), font size, test formatting, simple language use etc. will all be duties of both you and the student's aid.

In the end our job is to teach our students science, but with science comes language. It is not bad to spend a little extra time defining words your students don’t understand. From my experience anytime a student has come across an unfamiliar word, they ask, and then you have the opportunity to explain it to them. Also, when speaking to the entire class, if you say a word and students respond with funny looks on their faces, ask the class if anyone knows the meaning, usually someone does and then that student can tell the class.

Assistive technology can always help us in some way. If we know our students abilities, and know and understand the assistive technology we are given, then we should be able to appropriately use a majority of the equipment in everyday instruction.

Hopefully we will all be the best science teachers we can be, meaning, we will take advantage of assistive technology our schools provide us with. We will be in tune with our students and know their individual needs in order for them to succeed. If they have difficulty reading, try and do everything you can to help them understand the principles of science rather then testing their ability to read.