Literacy and Students with
Disabilities
Robyn Roper, M.Ed., Literacy Coach
Reading is essential to success in our
society.
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Many children learn to read quickly and
efficiently.
But some children are at risk because they
don’t read well.
Students with disabilities are often among
those at risk because they have great
difficulty reading.
Things that teachers can do to help
students with disabilities:
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Obtain knowledge of students’ strengths and
areas of need through language and reading
assessments.
Be knowledgeable about reading
development, effective reading instruction/
delivery methods, current reading research,
and challenges students face.
Implement strategies and differentiate
classroom literacy instruction to meet the
needs of all of their students.
Knowledge of Students’
Strengths/Needs is Significant
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The Education for all Handicapped Children
Act was passed in 1975 and later versions of
this law, known as IDEA (Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act), are in place.
These laws guarantee a free and appropriate
education for all children with disabilities.
When planning educational instruction and
services, educators will need to adhere to the
legal necessities.
Instructional Plans
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After going through the Response to
Intervention process and multiple
assessments, students’ current academic
and functional performance is identified.
The classroom teacher and other members of
the IEP Team (Individualized Education Plan)
can develop an instructional plan with
regards to what the student with disabilities
can do at the current time, what they need to
learn, and how the team will facilitate that
learning.
Literacy For Students with Disabilities
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For all students, and especially those with
disabilities, the process of learning to read
can break down with reading procedures or
comprehension and at different skill levels. (If
a student doesn’t develop sufficient phonemic
awareness skills, effective decoding, which
leads to fluency and comprehension, will be
negatively influenced).
Literacy for Students with Disabilities
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Children with disabilities often come to a
reading task with oral language deficits
and/or hearing impairments.
As the IEP team plans for reading instruction,
these deficits, as well as other disabilities,
need to be considered since they can be
problematic in the acquisition of acquiring
reading and comprehension skills.
Instructional Delivery
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Students with disabilities often need an
assortment of instructional approaches to
make their educational experiences more
effective.
There is not one best method to use in
teaching reading to students with disabilities.
There are, however, many reading methods
available, and it is essential that teachers
understand both the student and the various
methods available if the student is to have
the best possible learning experience.
Instructional Delivery
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The importance of obtaining knowledge of
students’ strengths and needs through
complete assessments cannot be stressed
enough. These assessments will result in
direction for intervention and effective
teaching.
Knowledge of Reading Development,
Methods, and Research
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“Between the ages of four and nine, children
will have to master some 100 phonics rules,
learn to recognize 3,000 words with just a
glance, and develop a comfortable reading
speed approaching 100 words a minute. He
must learn to combine words on the page
with a half-dozen squiggles called
punctuation into something—a voice or
image in his mind that gives back meaning.”
(Paul Kropp, 1996)
Teachers must be knowledgeable
about reading development
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Educators need to know how most children
learn to read and be able to recognize the
stages of reading development. These stages
include:
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Pre-Literacy Stage (the gradual process of
learning to understand and use oral forms and
then begin to explore and make sense of written
forms of language—begins at birth and continues
through the early childhood years, i.e., age 8).
Knowledge of Reading Development
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Emergent Literacy: Children in this stage
begin to be aware that print carries a
message. They know the sounds and names
of the alphabet, begin to use high frequency
words in their reading, etc.
Early/Developing Literacy: Students have
good control of early reading strategies, read
familiar text with some fluency, use phonetic
clues to decode, begin to engage in
discussions about what is read, etc.
Knowledge of Reading Development
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Transitional/Nearly Fluent Literacy: Children
in this stage use multiple sources of
information and a variety of strategies to
solve problems while reading, read a greater
variety of longer and more complex texts, etc.
Fluent Literacy: Students can recognize
many words in and out of context, apply
decoding strategies to figure out new words,
and read with increased fluency, accuracy,
and expression, etc.
Knowledge of Effective Reading
Instruction and Delivery Methods
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Again, there is no single “best” program for
teaching reading. However researchers
agree that certain qualities can help to make
reading instruction more effective with most
students.
In the primary grades (K-3), instruction
should address the Five Pillars of Literacy:
phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
vocabulary, and comprehension.
Effective Reading Instruction
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Reading instruction also needs to be explicit
and systematic.
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Explicit: Important skills and types of knowledge
are taught directly by the teacher (children are not
expected to infer skills and knowledge from
exposure and incidental learning opportunities).
Systematic: There is a planned and logical
sequence of instruction (children are not expected
to read long, complex words until they first can
read simpler words).
Effective Reading Instruction
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Reading instruction should also attempt to
motivate and engage students.
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Children need access to books with a variety of
topics and from a variety of reading levels, as well
as opportunities to choose books that interest
them and share books with each other.
Knowledge of research on reading is
important.
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The National Reading Panel was formed.
Among many things, the panel suggests
reading instruction that emphasizes the Five
Pillars:
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Phonemic awareness (letter and sound
knowledge) and phonics (letter/sound
correspondence) instruction are keys to teaching
children to read.
Fluency (being able to read quickly and
accurately) is also critical to success in reading.
Research from The National Reading
Panel:
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Vocabulary and word knowledge are strongly
connected to how well a child can read.
Comprehension (getting meaning from what
we read) is the reason we read. If children
can sound out words, but don’t understand
what they are reading, they are not really
reading.
Reading Research
The education community is continuously using
research to guide decisions about reading
instruction. Some of the most important
research topics teachers, administrators, and
parents need to know include:
21st Century Schools, assessment and
intervention, comprehension, early literacy,
parent engagement, reading disabilities,
technology, writing and spelling, and others.
Challenges for Students with
Disabilities in Acquiring Reading Skills
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Knowledge of students’ skills, reading
development, instructional methods, and
research are important. It is also equally
important for teachers to know how to handle
the challenges students bring.
Identification of the challenges and
implementation of strategies to help students
is imperative.
Students with disabilities may face
challenges in one or more of the following
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They lack knowledge of the phonetic code,
resulting in poor phonological awareness and
phonics skills.
They may also have difficulty distinguishing
multiple meaning words and figurative
language, therefore, lacking word knowledge
skills.
Reading Challenges for Students with
Disabilities
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Limited vocabulary can also be a problem.
Students often have limited opportunities for
incidental learning in their environments.
Students may have a lack of early literacy
experiences/limited exposure to stories that
are read aloud.
They may not hear/understand language and
may have delayed concept development and
comprehension because of impairments.
Identifying Challenges for Students
Leads to Strategies
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Educators need to create as many effective
literacy experiences as possible for students
to participate in.
Exposure and modification to the classroom
is essential. Using visual and tactile materials
will be more engaging for students.
When teaching students with disabilities,
book handling skills is also critical.
Strategies for Teachers of Disabled
Students
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In combination with creating effective literacy
experiences, educators also need to focus on
ways they can teach the Five Pillars of
Literacy using different approaches.
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The following are some suggestions.
Teaching Phonological Awareness
Strategically
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Teachers can model phonological awareness
skills as they read to students.
Ask students to discriminate between similar
and dissimilar words, highlight words that
rhyme, and exaggerate the sounds and
rhythm of words.
Phonological strategies:
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Help students identify the initial and final
sounds in words.
Teachers should explicitly model an
understanding that spoken words consist of a
sequence of phonemes and create
opportunities for students to practice
segmenting and blending words (sound by
sound and whole word).
Phonological Strategies
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Rhyming games
Listening games (have students listen to a
sequence of sounds; use objects that make
distinctive sounds like snapping fingers,
crumpling papers, or blowing a whistle).
Teacher recites a familiar story or poem while
students close their eyes; teacher changes a
word or ending, and students need to explain
what’s wrong.
Troll talk: pronounce words, phoneme by
phoneme.
Phonics Strategies
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Help students identify letter names,
consonant sounds, long and short vowels,
and consonant blends.
Identify word families and patterns to teach
new words.
Use making word activities and word wall
games increase reading skills.
Stretch and shrink words (say words slowly,
identifying beginning, middle and ending
sounds).
Phonics Strategies
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Students can write letters/words in shaving
cream, finger paint, pudding, etc.
Use magnet letters on a cookie sheet to
manipulate letters, spell words.
Make flip books with words (flaps with letters
that can be changed to create new words).
Use mini magnifying glasses to look in books
and around the classroom for specific
letters/words.
Fluency Strategies
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Explicitly teach students spelling patterns, as
well as the meanings of prefixes, suffixes,
and root words.
Teach word attack strategies, such as
sounding out the beginning and ending
sounds of a word, and finding little words
within big words.
Other Fluency Strategies:
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Engage students in repeated readings and
use text that is at the student’s instructional
level during guided reading.
Use texts that are at a student’s independent
level during individual reading time.
Echo reading, partner reading, readers’
theater, and choral reading are other great
strategies.
Comprehension Strategies:
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Use real objects, have students act out the
text, and use semantic and graphic
organizers.
Enhance background knowledge, help
students make connections with what they
read (connections to other texts, their lives
and the world)
Helping students create mental pictures as
they read is an important strategy.
Comprehension Strategies:
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Employ question activities during guided
reading and partner reading. Use true/false
activities, and ask students to
retell/summarize texts to increase
comprehension of what is read.
Model and teach students to look for context
clues, as well as looking back or forward in
the text for information, to resolve
comprehension problems.
Comprehension Strategies
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Describing attributes of a picture or object
from a familiar text is important. Detecting
foolish statements about a text and providing
missing elements within a story are
significant strategies that teachers can use to
develop comprehension skills while
increasing reading development.
Developing Reading Skills with Strategies:
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Have students listen to books on tape and
fluent reader examples.
Ask students to repeat back what is read.
Teach students to auditorally discriminate
and identify familiar sentences, exclamations,
and questions of a text.
Developing Fluent Reading Skills:
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Teach students to identify and approximate
phrases on the basis of length, loudness,
stress, rhythm and intonation.
Create activities that promote vocabulary
acquisition. Explicitly teach the meaning of
words, and help students focus on listening
for specific words during read alouds.
Developing Vocabulary Skills
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Remind students to listen carefully to others
as they read and talk. Listening vocabulary
far exceeds visual vocabulary until the eighthgrade reading level.
Create activities that promote vocabulary
acquisition. Explicitly teach the meaning of
words, and help students focus on listening
for specific words during read alouds
Strategic Vocabulary Teaching
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Use an inexpensive address book to have
students record new words in alphabetical
order.
Put 3 x 5 vocabulary flash cards on a ring.
Use picture cues (have students draw a
picture to depict the meaning of a word).
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Photo flash cards can also benefit younger
students.
In Summary
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Reading can be difficult for students with
disabilities. However, teachers can provide
excellent instruction by arming themselves
with knowledge of skills, development,
research, and strategies to address
challenges.