8 tips for enhancing literacy learning for students with disabilities
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Development of communication and language skills is critical to literacy learning. Students with moderate or severe disabilities use multiple forms of communication: oral language, sign language, written language, graphic or tactile representation of objects or concepts (such as picture cards or miniature objects), conventional and unconventional gestures, eye gaze, facial expressions, vocalizations, and body movements and habitual behaviors that others interpret as meaningful.
When providing literacy instruction for students with intensive communication needs, it is critical to determine their level of communication to ensure that a communication system is available that will be functional and effective for them.
You will want to provide students with access to information within their current levels of ability, and also expose them to materials that they do not yet understand and forms of communication that they cannot yet use independently. It is through engaging in communicative interactions with the support of others that students will develop advanced forms of communication.
Here are some general approaches teachers can take to facilitate the development of communication skills with students who have intensive communication needs.
1. Provide communication partners with instruction and support for engaging in effective communication interactions. For example, don't assume that other students will know how to interact with their peers with disabilities. Students will need ongoing support to learn to wait until the individuals have had time to respond, to scaffold responses rather than provide answers for them, and to engage them in their activities and conversations.
2. Learn and help others understand students' unconventional means of communication so that you are able to respond to attempts to communicate and develop a shared system of communication. Rather than imposing a conventional system on the students with disabilities, begin by understanding the means through which they communicate and expanding on that system. In a classroom, that means the students' peers can learn sign language or become familiar with the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) system they use.
3. Look to families and professionals who work with the individuals to understand how the students express themselves. A communication dictionary should be developed, kept current, and shared with everyone who comes into routine contact with the students with disabilities.
4. Be responsive to the student's current and varied forms of communication. Sometimes educators emphasize one particular form of communication that a student is learning (such as a system of graphic symbols)—this is important but should not be done to the extent of excluding other forms of communication that are part of the student’s functional repertoire. For example, most people naturally use gestures as part of their communication. Although the use of more complex forms of communication such as oral or sign language or picture communication systems should be encouraged, the student’s use of natural gestures and facial expressions should not be discouraged or prohibited.
5. Notice, encourage, and provide opportunities for expressive communication, focusing on opportunities for meaningful communication. All too often, individuals with disabilities are limited to indicating needs and wants. However, the social needs for communication are extremely compelling and motivating. Having pictures of or information about favorite events, people, pets, and activities that students can share can be an important opportunity for engaging in communication.
6. When fostering communication development, follow the student's focus of attention and refer to topics of interest to that person. That means ensuring that the environment includes things that he or she would want to communicate about. This could mean making sure that the student has pictures of people, places, or events of importance. Or, it could simply mean waiting until he or she looks at or expresses an interest in something and using that as a starting place for interaction, rather than trying to attract the student’s attention to an object or activity.
7. If replacing one form of communication with another is an instructional goal, make sure the new form is as effective and efficient as the form being replaced. This means that communication partners must be aware of and responsive to the student’s attempts to use the new form. For example, if the goal is to replace shouting out in class with hand raising, the teachers and other adults must ensure that the hand raising works better than shouting out in getting attention for the student. If it doesn’t, the student will soon revert to the more effective form of communication—shouting.
8. Consider a student’s native language and culture when developing and implementing educational interventions. The student’s native language, culture, and community are resources and strengths to be built on, not barriers that must be removed. The question for students whose first language is not English is how to teach English communication skills in a way that supports the continued development of their native language since the other language is a key means of communication for them. They can be provided with access to that other language, for example, by having both English and their home language represented in any AAC system or materials.
Adapted from Effective Literacy Instruction for Students with Moderate or Severe Disabilities by Susan R. Copeland and Elizabeth B. Keefe.
