Review & Critique of Research Paper 

  "Making Secondary Literacy Accessible for All"

                            

   by Christy Palmquist & Heather Prenevost

This article does a very good job at outlining for teachers the correct steps to take when planning for  Literacy Development in the classroom.  According to the authors, the first step should be conducting assessment of the student's literacy and language skills.  This is a critical step in guiding your planning and teaching.  It is important not to simply identify the needs but also the strengths of each student.  According to the authors, there are five pillars of reading that should be taken into consideration when we are planning our literacy intervention for our students.  These include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  Also important are expressive and receptive language skills which are the base of all academic learning.   Palmquist and Prenevost believe that we must address all five pillars of reading with every student, even those with disabilities in certain areas. 

According to the article, once the initial assessment is complete we must then match students with the right assistive technology tools and support.  This is a crucial step to help the learner become independent and self sufficient.  Taking the time to determine how each student will access the materials for learning and figuring out what level of support is needed must be an important factor.  Support should not be too much or too little for each student because this can result in little or no growth.  We should often ask ourselves, what accomodations or modifications will our students need to become the most successful?

Palmquist and Prenevost do a wonderful job in the article describing some tools and strategies that could be used with a wide range of learners including our struggling students.   

These strategies include :

1. Visualizing & Verbalizing

 

2. Thinking Reading

3. Vocabulary

4. Comprehension & Retelling 

Overall, I found this article very interesting and easy to read.  It outlined some very practical strategies and tools that could be used in any classroom at any time.  The CAR tool method is something that I can see myself using in my own classroom during shared reading time.  👍