Students with Special Needs Considerations
Note: In each category to be discussed under this heading ("Students with Special Needs Consideration"), it is essential for the reader to first realize that it is never appropriate to generalize comments about approaches to instruction and methodology to those children represented under this heading. Each child’s strengths, gifts, ways of knowing and understanding must be individually considered. Next, it is important to realize that most children would benefit from the examples suggested. Likewise, most children would benefit less from the non-examples discussed. It is, therefore, in the spirit of highlighting strategies commonly used by special education teachers, that these suggestions are shared with you. Many general educators may be surprised to see that these ideas are similar to or just like their own!
For general information about children with disabilities and challenges, visit these web sites:
http: //www.span.cpm.au/speld/
http://www.cec.sped.org/home.htm
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm
http://141.218.70.183/SPED603/paperfarage.html
http://www.aed.org/special.ed/links.html
http://www.cec.sped.org/erices
Examples:
The language understanding that words have different sounds, and that sounds can be combined into meaningful words, is highly correlated with children’s success. The oral and written language that they are exposed to in the pre-school years often has a dramatic impact on the level of that success. However, for many children who have special learning needs (such as auditory processing disabilities, hearing impairments, mental retardation, autism or attention deficit disorder), there is a considerable challenge to develop a keen sense of the relationship between isolated sounds, or phonemes, and words that result when those phonemes are combined.
The inability to correctly discriminate or recall sounds, the lack of attention to or hearing of oral language, and the difficulty in generalizing new information to a variety of settings interfere with an efficient acquisition of sound-symbol correspondences. The real challenge is for educators to find a way to bypass these barriers, and to make reading an expected outcome of instruction for all children.
To assist children with special learning
needs in their development of phonemic awareness, teachers use
many of these techniques:
Using specific skills instruction alongside a basal reading program
Of course, there is no one proven method by
which all children will develop this sense of sounds and
words; however, in combination, many commonly used methods,
materials and approaches can be quite effective,
especially when a teacher has a solid and broad-based awareness
of them. It is not unusual, for example, to observe a teacher
using specific skills instruction alongside a basal reading
program while working with children with (or without) special
learning needs. Teachers draw attention to spelling patterns and
letter-sound relationships as children begin to read or write,
and they ask good questions of students as students make choices
during the process. For example, a teacher might ask a student
what sounds he hears in a word, or what word would make sense
there. Teachers can gain great insight into how a child is
progressing in his phonemic awareness by listening carefully to
his responses. That information will, in turn, guide the
teacher’s decisions regarding her own lesson choices.
Using good children’s literature:
It is also desirable and common to observe
such instruction taking place while teachers are using good
children’s literature. Contextualizing the skills to be
learned will, at the very least, reinforce those skills and
encourage a love of reading! There are many good examples found
among the books of nursery rhymes, alliterative books, picture
books, rhyming books, repetitive pattern books, Dr. Seuss books,
and alphabet books with word-picture formats. As children try
to make sense of print, they learn, and consequently use, their
awareness of letter-sound relationships. When motivated by a
story to bring meaning to the printed symbols, a child’s
success will more likely emerge.
Rhythms, riddles and rhymes:
Using songs, finger rhymes, chants, simple
narratives, riddles or topical themes are certainly among the
most used and most enjoyed ways to engage young children in
phonemic awareness. Again, the list is seemingly endless, and
only limited by a teacher’s lack of interest in pursuing it.
There are many books and tapes dedicated to providing teachers
and parents and children with ideas!
Manipulatives, games, music, and movement are also becoming increasingly popular as we begin to understand the importance of designing our instruction with the multiple intelligences in mind. The multisensory approach is at the heart of Zoophonics, for example, which incorporates singing, role-playing, visual aids, audiotapes, games and practice books used in an integrated daily program. This, and similar commercially-produced programs, can produce extraordinary results in developing phonemic awareness in many children with special needs. (These have also been effectively used for children whose primary language is other than English
(Note: Another popularly used commercially-prepared kit is Scholastic’s Phonemic Awareness Kit (http://www.scholastic.com), which also uses manipulatives, picture cards and puppetry. Big books and trade books are available to accompany the activities designed in this kit, along with a teacher’s guide, daily activities and assessment materials.)
Generally, such materials support, rather
than supplant, the established core curriculum of a school
district.
Opportunities to write:
Providing emergent readers an opportunity to write is a natural place for children to further internalize their awareness of the relationship between language sounds and written symbols. Children at this level are making connections between what sounds they hear, and how those sounds (phonemes) are represented in writing (graphemes). Interactive journals in which children can feel the freedom to experiment with their newly gained phonemic awareness gives way to additional opportunities for the teacher to provide direct individualized instruction and assessment. For struggling readers and writers, and perhaps for all beginning writers, the ability to use invented (or temporary) spelling as their skills emerge should be encouraged. Temporary spellings represent what children are thinking about sounds and words, thus allowing children to use any word, rather than restricting them to using only those words they can spell. This is critical leeway without which they may never develop the courage or confidence to write at all.
Environmental print:
A print-rich environment will help to tie
written language to the normal vocabulary used by children in and
out of school. When children are able to observe a Word Wall,
for example, of high frequency words, they will experiment
with sound-letter correspondances independently, and rely on
these prompts to assist them in creating and/or making sense of
written language.
Rebus activities:
Oftentimes, the rebus activities include
pictures for nouns in sentences instead of the words. Children
enjoy developing their own rebuses in their writings, and can
later on substitute the actual words (or invented spellings of
words) in place of a rebus. Through these clues, children feel
more secure in their emergent reading and writing skills.
Consistent, dynamic, creative, and systematic approaches:
It may seem too obvious, but teachers do
need to be reminded on occasion that they are indeed
knowledgeable and creative. It is not unusual (in fact, it is
common) to find that most kindergarten and first grade teachers
are using a wide and rich array of materials and approaches to
support their students. This is also true for those professionals
working with children with special needs in separate settings,
such as Special Day Classes and Resource Rooms. As more and more
of the children in those special settings become more included in
general education settings, the classroom teachers and special
education teachers are sharing their collective wisdom and
creativity in providing effective strategies to assist in the
successful development of children’s phonemic awareness.
Visit these web sites:
For additional information on phonemic awareness, visit the following web sites:
http://www.readingonline.org/critical/phonemic/pos_statement_intro.html
(This is a position statement from the International Reading Association.)
http://www.ash.udel.edu/incoming/east1/emergent/phonem.html
http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/phoemic.p.k12.4.html (Yes, "phoemic".)
Non Examples:
"Sound of the Week" method:
This has been a traditional approach used
in many primary classrooms. The objective has been for students
to learn the sound-symbol and symbol-sound correspondences of the
consonants and vowels of the English alphabet. At one letter per
week, this method presumes a minimum of twenty-six weeks would be
needed for instruction. For children with special learning needs,
in general, the level of interest in such an approach, and the
choice of this over other approaches previously described, have
not proven to be effective in the long-run.
"Letter Books"
A letter being taught remains in the realm
of the abstract, and for ALL young children for whom phonemic
awareness is just emerging, more relevant, concrete opportunities
make more sense. Therefore, "Letter Books" that attempt
to exaggerate letter sounds without providing a real context lack
appeal, and they certainly do not excite very many young learners
about reading!
‘The fat cat that sits on a mat’ isn’t where it’s at!
While it may be true that
children who feel success in reading are likely to build on that
success and sustain an interest in reading, we can do better than
‘Fat Cat’ books! Such books, which scrape the bottom of
the barrel with accompanying ‘comprehension’ questions,
do little more that provide a few minutes of exaggerated
excitement. If teaching onsets and rimes is your objective, then
substitute the child’s own language, and see how much
richer the context can be!