Readers Theatre: Breaking Down the Wall of Learning Disabilities

"Graphic organizers have been shown to be of great assistance to students with learning disabilities". 

This quote struck me as being useful to teachers because most students that have learning disabilities don't really know what they know.  When a student has difficulty in a certain subject, whether it is math or reading or science, they tend to get bogged down in the unknown.  Students have a hard time getting caught up with the rest of the class because they don't know what information they are missing and they don't know where to begin looking for it.  Graphic organizers are helpful because it breaks a topic down into categories of information and shows the student what information they are lacking, how they can access it and they can make connections within that topic.  

I think it is important for students to know that a subject is not a collection of separate and unrelated categories of information, but that things are connected and should be looked at as a whole network of big ideas.  I was particularly interested in the section about graphic organizers in mathematics.  Math has always been my weakest area and I've always felt overwhelmed in class when all the other students seemed to be so far ahead of my thinking.  I think graphic organizers would have been really helpful for me because it would have helped me to know what I was missing and not feel scared to ask the questions I needed to clarify my thinking.