***** Respond in a paragraph following the established guidelines. The answer must be of a substantial nature and with quotes present in the textbook. Agree or disagree is not appropriate. 

***** Only use this book and specific pages.   Represent the quotes (author, year, and page) when reflecting the content in your paragraph with concepts fundament or content about Dr.  Fernald of the book.

Source of reference: ONLY textbook: Lerner, J.W. (2015). Learning disabilities and related disabilities: strategies for success (13th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage learning.

Peer 1

Remarkable Clinical Teacher

Word recognition is a serious problem for learners with special needs; the inability to recognize printed words or comprehend new ones prevents normal development of other reading skills in children and could even affect their entire school life.  Most psychologists attribute this deficiency to a lack of phonetic training; hence, the need to adopt different techniques for both reading and mastering word recognition.

Dr. Grace Fernald’s was a clinical teacher at UCLA. She created the Kinesthetic approach, which involved writing in the air as well as tracing words in large written or scripted format (Lerner,2015, p.79). Interaction with struggling learners enabled her to develop a multisensory approach to teaching spelling, which utilizes not only the conventional auditory and visual techniques but tactile and kinesthetic, as well. Her class had fewer than 16 pupils (…) for every two pupils, there was a student teacher who was a UCLA trainee. Dr. Fernald was in the background circulating among the pupils and the student teachers (Lerner,2015, p.79).  Dr. Fernald’s proposal to incorporate physical with auditory, verbal, and visual cues continues to be implemented by guide educators today.

Dr. Fernald’s method instruction was quite interesting. Every day, each pupil had to dictate a story to his/her student, the teacher wrote it all down. Next day, the teachers would bring the story back typed up on a special typewriter that made letters about half inch in height. The students read the stories to the teachers from the neatly typed manuscript, and then, the students would practice some of the words of the story written on big cards, tracing and spelling them. While one of the student teacher’s pupils was reciting the story, the other was doing the word practice, including softly repeating the story and tracing words (Lerner, 2015, p.79). Furthermore, this learning technique has influenced the works of other researchers in the field of reading difficulties during her time.

Fernald’s multisensory approach continues to benefit both special needs children and those who may not have difficulties in learning and paying attention. Her work also contributed to the commercial production of materials such as special typewriters, which special needs students use to type manuscript; this approach has eased their learning process because they are now able to trace words and learn how to spell them. Furthermore, the increased sophistication in the diagnosis of learning difficulties in recent years has pushed more special educators to embrace Fernald’s kinesthetic methods to teach learners who appear to be unresponsive to both visual and auditory methods. Ultimately, the multisensory approach has ensured that more students take an active role in learning; this kind of hands-on method has been crucial in enhancing special needs learners’ ability to collect and remember information, connect new and old information, and work through different learning complexities.