GE570

 The article I chose  was “Poetry and Writing:  Improving Fluency and Motivation For Students With Developmental Dyslexic Traits” by Dr. Benita Bruster,   Professor of Education and Interim Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Austin Peay University in  Clarksville, Tennessee.  The article was based on Dr. Bruster’s work in a fourth grade ELA classroom with a small group of students who had been selected by their classroom teachers because they were struggling readers (Bruster, 2015).  In her article, Dr. Bruster explains that she was a volunteer who was “interested in literacy” (Bruster, 2015, p.93) and was approached by the classroom teacher to work with five boys during “their regular small group reading time”  (Bruster, 2015, p.93) for a period of nine weeks).  She goes on to explain that the boys selected for the intervention were identified as demonstrating characteristics of “developmental dyslexia”  (Bruster, 2...

Me and My Reading Profile: A Tool for Assessing Early Reading Motivation      (portrait of my daughter, Tess, age 7, reading her favorite series Ivy and Bean )         The article  "Me and My Reading Profile" by Marinek, Malloy, Gambrell, and Mazzoni (2015) discusses the value of assessing a young reader's motivation. It states that motivation plays as vital a role in reading achievement as other key skills (such as decoding and comprehension), yet motivation is rarely addressed in grades K-2. The authors go on to state that it is necessary to measure young students' interest in developmentally appropriate ways so that "literacy instruction can be designed with motivation in mind" (Marinak et. al. p. 52) and propose that they have created a useful tool with which to gauge students' interest in reading. Marinek et. al. (2015) state that "Without attention to reading motivation, some students may never reach their full reading potential...

The Digital Revolution and Adolescent Brain Evolution This article discusses how the advancement in technological devices and their novelty to adolescents affect brain function and its ability to adapt to the demands of the digital age.  Studies have shown adolescents spend upwards of 11.5 hours daily being exposed to media, with a portion of that being spent on more than one device.  With the amount of screen time continuing to increase, and as technology becomes more widely available, the impact this will have on the adolescent brain continues to be explored. The three behaviors associated with adolescents are increased sensation seeking, a move towards greater peer affiliation, and an increase in risk taking.  During this point in a human’s life, the brain is said to have changeability and can adapt to meet the demands of the environment.  Once puberty is reached the brain then grows through specialization.  This includes greater connectivity and ...