Author Archives: readers1

Happy Fourth of July!

Photo copyright Richard Finegan, Paraeducator Central

Converting text to speech: Kurzweil 3000

By Richard Finegan      Kurzweil 3000 is a word processing (text-to-speech) program with some neat features and real value for some students.      The manufacturer, on its website, calls the 3000 a “comprehensive reading, writing and learning software solution for any struggling reader, including individuals with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder or [...]

Paraeducator Central: Our New Blog

     All aboard!  We now host a new blog by, for, and about paraeducators:  Paraeducator Central.      We only slowly came to recognize the amount of interest there has been on posts about topics relating to those non-teacher personnel who serve our special needs kids, whether we call them special education assistants, paraprofessionals, classroom aides, educational [...]

Paraeducators need to speak for ourselves

By Richard Finegan. We contribute to this acceptance of us as professionals when we stop letting the conversation, both in the schools and on the web, be ABOUT us and start being WITH us. We need to speak for ourselves.

First…Then: A kindergartner with autism, Part II

By Richard Finegan Experiencing some success with the rule cards I devised for Jacob, and taking further advantage of his desire and willingness to read, I took another step this week. Jacob (not his real name) is a kindergartner with autism  who decodes well, better than most of his peers, but is easily distracted, especially by [...]

Writing rules for a kindergartner with autism

By Richard Finegan Just when I thought I knew what I was doing after years as a paraprofessional working one-on-one with children with autism, life teaches me a hard lesson:  it is a different world in kindergarten! I mean, kindergartners are barely socialized!  And I’m not talking about the ones with autism.  They have to [...]

Non-fiction matters, Part II

By Sara Finegan Invariably, when Jack used our classroom library, he headed to my extensive selection of non-fiction books.  Bin after bin of books about animals, habitats, insects, birds, weather, space and other topics of interest were the focus of Jack’s interest.  If I guided him in the opposite direction, toward the leveled fiction books, he’d [...]

Non-fiction matters, Part I

By the time a kid hits the fifth grade, we are requiring them to write multiple-paragraph essays about topics related to social studies or science units. Our readers with autism don’t get an automatic pass on that requirement