Lesson 5: Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic
Reading, writing and math often present special challenges for disabled children. Learn some techniques for coping and for catching up, as well as some adaptations that might make success easier.
Tips for Teaching Reading
No homeschooling subject frightens parents more than the teaching of reading. I was told time and again to leave reading instruction to trained professionals, because it was far too complicated for parents. Then, when my children began school reading, I was asked how I taught them—and sometimes told that the methods I used don’t work. Since my children were reading far above grade level, I could only laugh at some mindless comments.
What I learned from teaching three young children to read was that there are thousands of ways to teach a child to read, and they all seemed to work. As parents, we are not tied to a specific teaching method, as the schools are. We can start with an idea, test it, and then change it if it does not work. We can combine methods and take our time. We watch our child and choose methods we believe will interest him. My children served as lab rats for my interest in reading instruction and from them I learned that the best way to teach a child to read is the way that works, whatever it is.
Teaching children with special needs to read does provide a few extra challenges. Often a greater range of methods must be used. Steps must be broken down into very small progressions and more time must be spent on each step. An older child just beginning to homeschool may have learned to hate reading because of unhappy experiences in school. Older children often have difficulty finding interesting material at their reading level. In general though, the methods that work with children who don’t have reading disorders will also work with those who do, as long as you make adaptations to the child’s needs.
Children need a few basic skills before beginning to read. They need to be able to match. If a child cannot match, he won’t be able to recognize a B whenever he sees one. Teach matching through everyday activities and games. For more on teaching children pre-reading skills, visit my webpage for Preschoolers: Getting Ready to Read. These tips are best for younger children. If you have an older child who cannot match, use items he cares about, such as model airplanes, pictures of sports stars and so on. You want to avoid, wherever possible, humiliating a child by using materials designed for much younger children.
If your child can match, recognize colors and shapes (assuming, of course, that vision is not an issue), and has fairly good language skills, he is probably ready to learn to read. Reading is one area where a new homeschooling parent might prefer professionally made materials, but they are not essential. If you use a good workbook on basic phonics skills from a school supply store and either a thrift store reading book or simple trade books, you can teach your own child to read.
Use as many different methods as possible to teach reading. Use as many of the five senses as are practical in order to increase the rate of retention (how much the child remembers.) Children remember what they do again and again, and this is less boring if you use a variety of teaching methods. In addition, you are more likely to stumble across a method that works. There are interesting articles about the benefits of both phonics and sight reading, but I found it was best to use a combination of methods. Many words cannot be sounded out, and sounding out every word takes too long. However, a child does need to be able to figure out a word he does not know. I usually taught the initial letter sounds informally as we learned our letters. Then I taught sight reading for a little while, casually discussing letter sounds and rules. Once my children understood what reading was all about, we studied phonics in a more formal way, continuing to learn to sight read the most common words.
Let’s look at the word popcorn. Suppose you have chosen this as a sight word for your child. Think about all the ways you can teach this word to your child. You might begin by finding a book about popcorn. This can be read over a bowl of popcorn. Make special note of the word whenever it is seen in the book. You can point to the word whenever it appears and let your child say it. Write the word in large print on a wipe-off board or banner paper. Show your child how to trace the letters with crayons several times, making a rainbow word. Help him name each letter as he traces it. You might even enjoy trying to spell the word in unbuttered popcorn. For children with language disorders, it is especially important to continually associate the word with the real item. You’ll want to keep a bowl of popcorn handy.
Spell the word with large letters. Print the letters on cardboard squares or buy commercial toy letters. If you have enough letters, spell the word out and then let your child spell it again just under your word. Discuss each letter as it is placed. Next pick up each letter and discuss the sound it makes. Point out that you need both the "o" and the "r" to get the correct sound in corn. You may want to make those letters in a different color at first to remind your child that they go together. If your child is ready, mix the letters up and teach him to spell it.
Have your child learn the sign language alphabet. Many children with learning disabilities benefit from the physical nature of this language. Teach your child to spell the words you are learning to read. When finger spelling is used in conversation, deaf people do not say each letter. They say the word, sounding it out as they spell. They read the fingerspelled word the same way. This is excellent practice in reading and phonics.
Now that your child is familiar with the word, begin teaching your child to read it within a sentence. Write sentences using the word. If your child is still a beginning reader, keep the first sentences short. “I like popcorn.” “Popcorn is white.” “I eat popcorn with butter.”
Finally, try to find a book for your child that uses this word often and read it together. If it is too hard for your child, do shared reading, which is an important skill for parents of delayed reading.
Shared reading means that the parent and child read a book together. How you divide the reading depends on your child’s skill. This is a valuable way to provide reading experience for older children who do not read well. When I tutored, I found that my fifth grade students were embarrassed to be reading stories about talking bunnies. They wanted to read something they wouldn’t be ashamed to carry around in front of their peers. I often let them choose their own reading material. The child began to read, and when he became tired or frustrated, I took over. I read for a few pages and handed the book back to the child. As the child read, I quietly wrote down some of the words he didn’t know how to read. In our next lesson, we practiced those words. I explained to the child that when he knew all the words in the book, or at least most of them, he could keep the book. Since he had chosen it and was not embarrassed by it, he was eager to own it and to carry it around.
Don’t forget to spend time simply reading to your child. Even after he reads well, he may enjoy being read to. Although it is important to learn to read, it is also important to become familiar with books. Most children can listen to books they cannot read themselves.
Allow your child to choose his own reading material. Don’t tell him it’s too easy or too hard. The greatest challenge in teaching a special needs child to read is often getting him to want to read. If you can find material he enjoys, you have won most of the battle.
There are many accommodations you can develop to help your child. Be sure to check the resource list in this course. Following are a few basics that are common for use with learning disabled children:
Many children have difficulty keeping their place on a page. There are so many words and letters that they become overwhelmed. Initially, you may want to use a file card with a strip cut out. Have the child slide this over the page so that he can see only a few words at a time. Then work up to using a piece of paper to cover all lines below his. Eventually, he should learn to read the page without help.
Children with vision difficulties can place a magnifier over the section he is reading or even cover the entire page with a magnifier.
Children sometimes benefit from larger print and more space between lines even when vision is normal. Occasionally retype reading material and print it in a larger font with wide word and line spacing.
Be patient as the child reads. If you continually interrupt to tell the child to sound out the word or to concentrate, you will distract him and make him self-conscious. Act as though you have all the time in the world.
Praise your child for those things he did well or better. Avoid excessive corrections—choose one or two of the most important and continually work on those until he has mastered them.
Teach your child to read fluently. After he has learned all the words in a paragraph, show him how it should sound read smoothly. Let him practice until he can do it. Show him how to read with expression by modeling and then letting him read the sentence again.
