literacy and individuals with DS

[Guest guest]

Last Friday, I met with a HS age girl with ID (not DS) to evaluate her with regard to literacy. Earlier in the day I had met with the district's reading specialist, who had recently been asked to consult on this case. This teacher, with whom I have an excellent relationship, had confided in me that no one on the team believed that the student could ever become a reader – including both the girl’s special ed teacher, who had apparently “tried” the program with her and concluded that it “didn’t work”, and a district neurospychologist who had concluded in a recent report that “phonics clearly didn’t work” for this student. Fortunately, this reading teacher said she would be willing to try a research-based phonics program if I thought it

would work.

My first 15 minutes with this girl was very unproductive: she clearly didn’t want me there, and wouldn’t let her mother leave the room. My objective was as much to see what she was capable of doing as it was assessing her current skills (which I knew were very limited) – and she was refusing to do phonics work with any medium (tiles, whiteboard, magnets, etc). I, admittedly, was starting to think that perhaps the school team was correct.

Then something amazing happened. I asked her – as a last resort – if she wanted to read a book. Her mother looked at me like I had lost my mind, reminding me “she can’t read” – but the girl took the book (a book containing only short-vowel words and easy sight words) from my hands and immediately began to try to sound out the words. I had discovered earlier that she knew all her consonant sounds but not her vowel sounds, so with me prompting her with the short-vowel sounds, she actually started reading the book! By the time

she reached the last page, I no longer had to prompt her with the vowel sounds (or any sounds for that matter) – then she looked up at me and asked if she could read it AGAIN! I then noticed that her father had entered the room. Both parents watched, with a combination of joy and shock (and I suspect some anger), as their daughter reread the book – this time almost fluently – then screamed out, in Spanish (her first language), “I read it by myself!”.

I’m sharing this story because it teaches us so many important lessons. The most obvious, of course, is that we must never let other, alleged “experts”, lower the bar for our kids. Second, although behavior can often serve as a barrier to instruction, it can also be the key to what we’ve been missing: in this case, a student was trying to communicate to the adults around her that what she really wanted to do is read something that had meaning – and not only a bunch of isolated words and letters. I really think it comes

down to respecting the behavior as opposed to always assuming that it is “wrong”. We also should not assume that an individual doesn’t want to learn something simply because s/he’s rejecting out attempts at teaching it a certain way; rather, we should find a different way of teaching it. I’d like to think that there is also a lesson regarding literacy here. Being taught to read is, in my opinion, a civil rights issue; it’s an essential skill that enables us to hold a job, take public transportation, shop, check a movie schedule, find out what’s going on in the world, maximize our vocabulary, etc., etc. Consequently, we should NEVER give up on the goal of enabling our kids to become true readers – not “functional” readers who memorize “important” words

like “restroom” and “exit”. After all, the function of reading is to be able to navigate the world around us – if all a person can “read” is a few memorized words, then reading is really not serving any function for him/her.

Sheryl

[Guest guest]

Excellent! Thanks for sharing this valuable piece of information and a reminder to us all!

V.

http://thevelander4.blogspot.com/

Subject: literacy and individuals with DSTo: "CDSC Listserve" <cdsc_members >, "Listserv Multiples-DS" <multiples-ds >Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 9:00 AM

Last Friday, I met with a HS age girl with ID (not DS) to evaluate her with regard to literacy. Earlier in the day I had met with the district's reading specialist, who had recently been asked to consult on this case. This teacher, with whom I have an excellent relationship, had confided in me that no one on the team believed that the student could ever become a reader – including both the girl’s special ed teacher, who had apparently “tried” the program with her and concluded that it “didn’t work”, and a district neurospychologist who had concluded in a recent report that “phonics clearly didn’t work” for this student. Fortunately, this reading teacher said she would be willing to try a research-based phonics program if I thought it would work.

My first 15 minutes with this girl was very unproductive: she clearly didn’t want me there, and wouldn’t let her mother leave the room. My objective was as much to see what she was capable of doing as it was assessing her current skills (which I knew were very limited) – and she was refusing to do phonics work with any medium (tiles, whiteboard, magnets, etc). I, admittedly, was starting to think that perhaps the school team was correct.

Then something amazing happened. I asked her – as a last resort – if she wanted to read a book. Her mother looked at me like I had lost my mind, reminding me “she can’t read” – but the girl took the book (a book containing only short-vowel words and easy sight words) from my hands and immediately began to try to sound out the words. I had discovered earlier that she knew all her consonant sounds but not her vowel sounds, so with me prompting her with the short-vowel sounds, she actually started reading the book! By the time she reached the last page, I no longer had to prompt her with the vowel sounds (or any sounds for that matter) – then she looked up at me and asked if she could read it AGAIN! I then noticed that her father had

entered the room. Both parents watched, with a combination of joy and shock (and I suspect some anger), as their daughter reread the book – this time almost fluently – then screamed out, in Spanish (her first language), “I read it by myself!”.

I’m sharing this story because it teaches us so many important lessons. The most obvious, of course, is that we must never let other, alleged “experts”, lower the bar for our kids. Second, although behavior can often serve as a barrier to instruction, it can also be the key to what we’ve been missing: in this case, a student was trying to communicate to the adults around her that what she really wanted to do is read something that had meaning – and not only a bunch of isolated words and letters. I really think it comes down to respecting the behavior as opposed to always assuming that it is “wrong”. We also should not assume that an individual doesn’t want to learn something simply because s/he’s rejecting out attempts at teaching

it a certain way; rather, we should find a different way of teaching it. I’d like to think that there is also a lesson regarding literacy here. Being taught to read is, in my opinion, a civil rights issue; it’s an essential skill that enables us to hold a job, take public transportation, shop, check a movie schedule, find out what’s going on in the world, maximize our vocabulary, etc., etc. Consequently, we should NEVER give up on the goal of enabling our kids to become true readers – not “functional” readers who memorize “important” words like “restroom” and “exit”. After all, the function of reading is to be able to navigate the world around us – if all a person can “read” is a few memorized words, then reading is really not serving any function for him/her.

Sheryl