Teaching Students About Learning disabilities through childrens Literature

Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children 's Literature

An Article Critique

Introduction

Mary Anne Prater , Tina Taylor Dyches and Marissa Johnstun 's Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children 's Literature ' is an article written with two chief purposes . It is firstly a material that aims at providing guidelines ' for teachers to effectively select from an array of available children 's literatures , suitable materials that can provide students with educative insights about disabilities in general (Prater , Taylor Johnstun , 2006 ,

. 14 . The article basically consists in a generous

discussion of three distinct but related subjects : first , the manner by which teachers are to select which literary material best exemplifies the purpose of providing students with an added knowledge about disabilities second , the manner by which teachers are to select the most effective methodology in teaching the subject matter and third , the manner by which teachers are to set a classroom atmosphere apt for student reflection and discussion of the same (pp . 15 , 17 and 20 . In the same way , the article also hopes to promote awareness , understanding , and acceptance of those with disabilities ' alongside its ' reasoned primary purpose (p . 15

Critique of the Article

It must be first mentioned that the noble purpose with which the article was pursued is in itself an already admirable endeavor . The portrayal of persons with disabilities figuring well in choice literatures for children is indeed an avenue that lets younger students expand their horizons on the diversity of world they live in . As in most cases , students even at an early age are also susceptible to acquiring stereotypes that may lead them to later on discriminate people who are not like them . At the very onset of learning process therefore , students need to be imbibed with a certain kind of broadmindedness to help them realize that something good that may be derived even from people with disabilities , not really despite , but at times because of their conditions . It is thus important for that the students to develop an attitude of acceptance that can eventually lead them to a greater understanding ' of their otherwise diversely constituted environment (p 21 . In view of this reasoned purpose , it needs to be affirmed that the Thirty Recommended ' literature selections offered by the authors can well cover the need of students to be exposed to an array of distinct stories to suit their preferences and backgrounds (p . 18-19

It seems however that there are areas that still need to be further addressed in to sufficiently translate this noble goal into effective learning methodologies . Firstly , the authors of the article did not fully address age discrepancies that must be considered in adopting learning methodologies for children . Children learning , it must be noted , must be handled by approaches that cater to differing levels Apart from their proposal to stratify age levels in their independent reading time allotments (p . 20 , it seems that the authors have so tended to regard children as a collective genre . This should not have been...