SCUBA-D Learning Strategy

A learning strategy that is found very useful as a reading strategy and a comprehension of vocabulary strategy is SCUBA-D. Scuba-d stands for sound it out, check the clues in the sentence, use the main idea and the picture clues, break the word into parts, ask for help and dive into the dictionary. This benefits students who have trouble reading, and who have trouble with certain vocabulary words in particular. Scuba-d allows students to practice learning vocabulary and reading comprehension on their own by helping students sound out words first and then if that does not work, Scuba-d tells students to check the clues in the sentence and the main idea from the sentence or book to help students figure out the words meaning or how to say the word, then the strategy tells students to break the word into parts to help them, which is a good way for students to break down the word with different vowel sounds to see where the student is struggling with the word. I like how this strategy does not allow students to ask for help or look in a dictionary until they have exhausted trying to figure out the word on their own because this way student's are not just being told the word, they are learning how to find out a word on their own, and for future words they may struggle with. This benefits students the most who have reading and vocabulary struggles and it benefits them because they are learning a strategy that is not just available at the moment but for all words that the students may struggle with. The student's the strategy is benefiting, benefits them because they usually just skip over a word or ask someone to tell them what the word is because they have no idea where to start figuring out the word or how to begin saying the word to then understand it. Scuba-d allows students a place to start with understanding reading and vocabulary comprehension, and does not allow an escape for student's to run away from these problems. Scuba-d forces students to learn step-by-step how to dive into reading a word and understand a words meaning, and not just continue reading day by day with skipping over words or asking others to tell them the word. The reality is if student's that need help with reading and vocabulary comprehension keep skipping over words then they will never learn the basis of reading and vocabulary comprehension, which is why scuba-d is so important, because it benefits student's who need just that. To implement scuba-d for students that will benefit from scuba-d, as teachers we need to explicitly teach and model the strategy for our students before setting them free. To really benefit from scuba-d, student's need to know exactly what to do and when to do it, otherwise the strategy will be inaffective and not worth using to the student. keep reminding the student how to use it, even give the student a bookmark with the strategy written out on it, so that students are always reinforced to use the strategy when they come across words they do not know. The more teachers reinforce student's to use the strategy and give helpful reminders and ways to remember the strategy, the more beneficial the strategy will be to the student in their everyday life.