Special Education--Elementary--Christine Sexton, Abigail Brock, LeAnn Cox, Ginny Derzis Carroll, and Mary Ramsey (Team--Team Jackson)
2015 Summer Fellowship Plans:
Participate in Orton-Gillingham dyslexia training in Atlanta to facilitate the district's new protocols identifying students who would benefit from intervention.
Fund for Teachers Video Spotlight
LeAnn Cox and Christine Sexton --Team Jackson Orton-Gillingham Dyslexia Training
Video Overview LeAnn Cox and Christine Sexton teach 5th Grade at Forest Oaks Elementary and along with fellow teachers Mary Ramsey, Ginny Carroll, and Abigail Brock they attended the Orton-Gillingham dyslexia training in Atlanta. LeAnn and Christine explain how their team used the Fund for Teachers grant to help improve reading skills in her students.
Project Description
Our proposed fellowship will include attending the Orton-Gillingham Institute for Multi-sensory training in Atlanta, Georgia, in June of 2015. We will send five teachers from our school to this training to become teacher leaders and model multi-sensory instructional strategies for other teachers. It is important to continue the continuity of instruction throughout the grade levels, therefore teachers in different grade levels will attend the training. Upon return, we will continue to expand our knowledge of multi-sensory instruction by participating in a Professional Learning Community that will meet regularly to discuss student progress and research latest instructional techniques. Identified students will have the opportunity to be exposed to multi-sensory instruction throughout their elementary careers by having the opportunity to be placed in the classrooms of teachers who have had the multi-sensory strategies training. Upon completion of the training, we will implement the strategies in the 2015-2016 school year with students who exhibit characteristics of dyslexia. The instruction will continue post the 2015-2016 school year, as we know that learning is a process, both for the students and for the teachers. We will also implement multi-sensory strategies in instruction with all students to increase student engagement. Multi-sensory instruction is a perfect way to get all students excited and involved in the learning process.
Career Impact:
- This fellowship has provided an incredible opportunity to deepen our reading pedagogy and has completely changed the way we are teaching reading and spelling. Through our experience, we were able to learn how to teach foundational information on the basic components of reading such as letter sounds, creating, and blending words. In our classrooms, we have many students with reading challenges, including dyslexia. One of our biggest struggles is decoding words, blending words, and reading fluently. The Orton-Gillingham training taught multi-sensory strategies to help students make connections between the letters and words that stick in their brains while engaging their senses (auditory, kinesthetic, and visual). We have an increased confidence in teaching our students phonics and helping them sound out words and syllables through this multi-sensory approach. Our toolbox of strategies to help students with reading struggles has grown since our training! We have a host of new strategies that we can implement in both whole group and small group instruction. We are already seeing gains and growth, and we are seeing students become confident readers! They have go-to strategies that they can use to decode words to gain deeper meaning from their reading! Students are reading more accurately, more quickly, and smoother; they are gleaning deeper meaning from text; and their spelling is improving! We are forever grateful for this opportunity and recognize the tremendous impact Orton-Gillingham training has had on our instruction! Our teaching is forever changed!