Children with intellectual disabilities often have difficulty acquiring reading and writing skills. Also, the learning pace of ID students in these two areas is different and slower than that of students without disabilities and they need to spend more time on it. In addition, they need more resources and support through different sensory pathways to acquire this learning. Therefore, is very important adapt the methods of reading and writing to promote their social, cultural, and work inclusion and, above all, to promote their personal autonomy.
In this post I will explain three reading and writing methods adapted to children with intellectual disabilities (ID): (1)-Method of Comes Nolla (2)- Down Madrid reading and writing method (3)- The Stairs method.
This method was explained by Comes Nolla in his manual of 1993. The method has four basics aspects and six different phases, with increasing levels of difficulty. The method in question is based on the fact that all students like to have books and stories read to them.
The four basics aspects:
Evaluate the student's abilities.
Ensure that a phase has been consolidated to move on to the next, in which the level is higher and what has been learned in the previous phase is necessary.
Learning to read must be functional.
Get reading to be conceived as a work tool and associated with fun and entertainment, to motivate students to read.
The phases:
First
In the first phase, the teacher makes sense of the images seen in the book, narrating them as he turns the pages. This phase can be started at a very early age, the academic objective is that the child is able to follow with the finger the words that accompany the pictures (even if he does not understand them or does not know how to read them) because in this way he hears what he sees, because the teacher is reading it.
Also in this phase, reading acquires new characteristics for children, because it is done in a relaxed atmosphere of joint attention, the climate is close and affectionate during the time of reading. And at the same time, the student does not feel that reading is something obligatory or mechanical without meaning (in this case the objective is to give explanation to the images and illustrations of the book).
Second
To begin this second phase, the teacher must choose a word to start with. Specifically Comes Nolla, used the word "Teo". The word that gives the name to the protagonist of the children's stories used in the first phase was chosen because it would be more significant for the children than another word they had not heard before. Anyway, another word can be used for this phase, as long as the steps and indications of the realization of this step.
Before carrying out the necessary activity with the child, the teacher has to write the chosen word (TEO in this case) on a white sheet of paper, in larger than usual font and red.
In this phase, the teacher has to stop the narration in different parts of the reading, when the chosen word appears, then the teacher shows the child the paper with the written word and explains that it says "Teo" there. Further on, the teacher asks the student questions, which are answered by the chosen word. With these two actions, the student is able to identify which word he or she is working with.
After completing these two tasks, the child is asked to read the word on the paper, to follow it with his or her finger. If necessary, the teacher can correct the pronunciation.
Once the child can carry out this last activity mentioned, this second phase would be considered to have been overcome. If the teacher "wants to go further" he can introduce other words in the same way, the words are usually: mummy, daddy, the child's name, brothers and sisters' name...
Third
The aim of this third phase is that the student can discriminate letters as units. To do this, the teacher gives him/her the paper with the word and pieces in the form of the letters that make up the word. The child has to make the word with the pieces and taking as a reference the word written on the paper. Once the child passes this step with ease more than one time, the teacher takes away the paper that he used as a model, further ahead more pieces in the form of letters are added (so that he can select the necessary ones).
When the child skillfully carries out the activities mentioned above, starting from the word chosen in the initial phase (Teo) the teacher gives the child the letters in differnts papers and teaches him/her the possible combinations between them. When the student is able to say them, the other vowels are added and combined to create new syllables, which the student will acquire. When the teacher considers that the pupil has acquired sufficient skills, he adds consonants to this task of combination and creation of syllables.
Quarter
In this phase, thanks to the combination of syllables learned in the previous phase, the child can read words that are important to him. Then, at this point the teacher helps him to associate the words to pictures, or to read words that the student himself selects. When the child can read and associate the important words for him without difficulties, this phase is surpassed.
Fifth
In this fifth phase, the objective is for the child to be able to read sentences. The child's vocabulary is quite small, he also does not know the verbs or other important words, therefore the teacher has to teach the student the articles and replace the verbs with pictures or images that refer to or show the action.
When the child can complete this task successfully, he will be able to read many meaningful sentences, which will be useful in his daily life. And it is at that moment when the teacher can proceed to perform the last phase of the method.
Sixth
The sixth and last phase, the teacher replaces the phrases of the reference book used at the beginning of the method, for the phrases worked throughout the different phases. It is important that the teacher reads the book with enthusiasm and joy so that the child feels motivated to read "his book", because it will be created by the sentences he has formed throughout the process.
Finally, the child is ready to read the books according to his level. In my opinion this method was very useful for introduce the reading in child with ID, but also it can be useful for implement the reading skills in students without disabilities.
This method of reading and writing has been developed by the Madrid Down Syndrome Foundation, adapting the "Chino Chano"* method and creating a new, synthetic, phonetic and multisensory method, with visual, tactile activities...
The authors of this method are: the school heads Carmen Fernández-Miranda and María Isabel Zulueta, two speech therapists, a special education teacher, a hearing and language teacher and a counsellor.
The aim of this method is to increase and compensate for communication and language difficulties through systems of graphic symbols (photographs, drawings, words or letters), gestures (mimicry, gestures) and support products (technological resources or communication books). This method is composed of a lot of material. The students have some cards of each of the letters of the alphabet. With these cards, they work progressively to develop different skills (association of grapheme-phoneme, reading and writing of syllables, reading and writing of words with the worked letter...).
In this method a very specific font is used (Sarakanda, created by Alejandro Valez), which is aimed at children with dyslexia, as it makes them easier to read and they can distinguish the letters more easily than if they were written with another font.
This is a fairly new method, but in my opinion of those explained in this post it is the one I like best and the one I think can be most useful for students with ID to acquire reading and writing skills.
*The Chino Chano method is a method of reading and writing in capital letters organized by the graphs corresponding to all the consonants. For each of the graphies there are three different files (the cover, the worksheets and the autodictions). The material is designed for students with SEN, therefore, its structure allows not only to work on reading and writing, but also other activities (learning vocabulary, morphosyntax ...).
This last method that I will explain in this post, is the method of "Las Escaleras", was created by Santiago Molina, 1991. This method is called The Stairs, because the main idea is to go up steps, as new acquisitions are achieved and the difficulty increases.
This method constitutes the carrying out of activities ordered by difficulty (from less to more difficulty). This system allows to build from the most concrete (the letters) to the most abstract (words), facilitating the representation of the letters and words to the children with ID.
The three stages of the method:
Logographic stage: in this first stage, the teacher helps the student to recognise the words in a global way and to differentiate them from one another. He also teaches him that words are composed of syllables. In this stage, the teacher writes the words on cards (the words have to be significant for the child and have to be written in big red letters) and the pupil has to associate them with the image or object they are calling. For example: the word table, relate it to the table in the classroom.
Alphabetical stage: the creator of this method, composes this stage of 24 didactic units, in the units the letters are studied in the contexts of the sentences. At this stage, the teacher writes the sentences on cardboard (consonants are written in black and vowels in red). The teacher helps the student to carry out activities with that sentence, further on the teacher can do the activities with the classmates of the pupil to collectivize the learning. Also, when the child has a sufficient level of mastery of reading, at this same stage, the teacher teaches the child writing activities (copying the sentences, completing the missing syllables, with very simple dictations... this type of exercise is always carried out with sentences that are significant for the child).
Orthographic stage: in this last stage, the author proposes that the teacher helps the child to do the activities proposed in the 20 books entitled "Stories to read and do".
Finally, when the pupil does all the activities in the books the author of this method says that he is ready to read other books that are a little more difficult.
The methods explained in this post and that I have explained to students with intellectual disabilities, can be used by all children with or without difficulties, to facilitate their learning process of reading and writing.
-What do you think?
-Do you know any different method of learning to read and write?
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