Parents' Corner
Advancing Literacy for AAC Users
Rose-Marie Gallagher, M.Ed., has been involved in special education for 22 years as an elementary special educator, inclusion teacher, and as the parent of a child with severe communication and physical disabilities. She currently supports families and professionals in meeting literacy goals for children with complex communication and motor issues. This month, Rose-Marie shares some of her ideas for teaching literacy to students who use AAC. Also look for Rose-Marie at our AAC Institute Symposium in June, 2008. As always, feel free to e-mail parents@aacinstitute.org with any comments or questions.
Robin
Along with other parents and teachers working to teach non-verbal children to read, I find myself asking, “How can I know how a child is reading when I can’t hear what’s going on inside his or her head?” Unfortunately, the lack of an answer may contribute to the alarming statistic that fewer than ten percent of AAC users read beyond the second grade level (Erickson, 2003). I’ve been searching for answers to this question in hope of improving the literacy outcomes for children using AAC. I’d like to share some of the things I’ve found with you here.
Literacy is made up of a combination of proficient reading and writing skills, but it is more manageable to look at reading and writing separately. If we look at the research on best practices in reading instruction (National Reading Panel, 2000), we see that children must master five skill areas if they are to develop strong reading skills: phonemic awareness (understanding the sounds that make up words), phonics (letter-sound relationships), fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Further evidence (Kame'enui et al, 1997) shows that phonemic awareness and phonics are particularly critical in building a solid foundation of reading skills, as children must be able to decode unfamiliar words they find in text.
Much of what is taught in college about teaching decoding skills involves listening to verbal output by children. Teachers traditionally listen to students sounding out words and reading aloud so they know when and how to help children who are having difficulty. Since reading out loud is not an option for children using AAC, teaching them to identify words by sight is a fairly universal strategy reported by their families. Sight word recognition is an important reading skill but it does not prepare learners with the full set of strategies they need to read and write effectively.
When children are not able to let us hear how they read, we have to look for other ways to understand how they’re reading. One possibility is to look for ways to make reading “tangible.” If we shift from thinking that reading must be heard to finding ways that it can be handled or seen, we are no longer left locked outside the child’s head. With creative supports, even children with severe motor impairments can access “reading manipulatives” that allow us to understand how they are reading.
In looking for approaches that might help our children who use AAC, I found several exciting projects already in place to support the “handling” or “watching” of sounds. One of the newest is IntelliTools’ Classroom Suite 4, released in December ‘07, whose reading strand is based on national standards for reading instruction. This software includes some outstanding activities in which children can manipulate sounds and letters on the computer screen. In this way, they can experiment with sounds and read words aloud similar to their speaking peers. Because of its universal design, Classroom Suite 4 is highly suited to children with motor impairments. It provides alternative access through keyboards, alternative keyboards such as the IntelliKeys, switches, touch screens, head mice, joysticks, and various other alternative input devices.
These sample phonemic awareness activities included in Classroom Suite 4 are designed to teach children about the sounds that make up words:
matching beginning sounds
sorting by ending soundsA sample phonics activity available in Classroom Suite 4 is illustrated below:
building words with rimes (word families)Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver, highly respected experts in the field of literacy and disabilities, recently published a book on early literacy that belongs in every teacher’s library. This book, Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four-Blocks® Way, is based on Patricia Cunningham’s Four-Blocks® literacy framework. It offers a variety of excellent strategies for adapting reading and writing instruction for learners with disabilities. Among other examples of phonemic awareness and phonics activities in the “Working with Words” strand, Erickson and Koppenhaver describe how word prediction software and eye pointing can be used to improve letter-by-letter spelling, how to teach the spelling of unfamiliar words using spelling patterns found in existing words, and how to use visual supports to reinforce rhymes.
I was quite excited to find Words Their Way, 4th ed., by Donald Bear et al (Pearson Prentiss Hall, 2008), another outstanding resource for making decoding and vocabulary skills “tangible.” In addition to providing explicit instruction for phonemic awareness and phonics, the Words Their Way program teaches children spelling patterns and knowledge of roots, affixes, and word origins. In fact, Words Their Way is designed to take students past 8th grade level word attack skills. The program uses hands-on sorting or categorizing for manipulating sounds and spelling patterns, working with whole words that students will encounter in their reading. It offers plenty of practice using authentic words, something that can be difficult to provide for children with severe motor disabilities.
While Working Their Way was designed for general classrooms and has been found to be particularly helpful for English Language Learners, it lends itself to easy adaptation for non-verbal children and those with motor impairments. These adaptations are not explained in the book but the process of sorting manipulatives, once it has been worked out for each student, can be repeated for many years of word study. If we take a creative look at a wide variety of access modes, including eye gaze, simple switches, speech-generating devices, computers, and other means of access, we find the activities can be adapted quickly and easily. Since WTW was created with general classrooms in mind, this ease of adaptation makes it ideal for inclusive educational settings.
sorting by rimes, accessed by two switches (each naming a column heading) and partner placing cards under the heading as directed
spelling patterns for a-e, ai, using WordSort® software, accessible by mouse, switch, joystick
word cards used to show changes to word roots when adding the suffix –ingWe’ve talked about reading skills to this point and now I’d like to briefly turn our attention to writing. Another exciting aspect of Words Their Way is its carryover from reading into independent spelling and writing with word prediction. Students must have a good grasp of spelling patterns, vocabulary, and word derivation before they are able to write proficiently. While these skills do not make up the full set of complex skills needed for advanced writing, they are important tools that allow children to say more precisely what they mean in their writing. When word choice and spelling come easily to a child, more of their attention can be given to purpose, audience, organization and other aspects of writing.
A further benefit from Words Their Way’s emphasis on sorting words into categories, whether according to phonemes (sounds in words), spelling patterns, word parts or language of origin, is that it builds upon and reinforces the concept of categorization that many speech-generating devices use to organize vocabulary. Whether a device uses a page-based system or semantic compaction (i.e.: Minspeak), WTW can reinforce the concept of organizing ideas into meaningful categories for easy retrieval.
Phonemic awareness and phonics skills are important parts of the bigger picture of literacy instruction that cannot be ignored simply because we have historically lacked the tools or methods to teach them. Instead, if we look at what has been developed for students with special needs and those without, we may find ideas for ways to make phonemic awareness and phonics accessible to children using AAC. By providing a foundation of reading instruction that supports all the recommended skill areas, we may be able to increase the number of AAC users that achieve high levels of literacy.
Resources:National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Bear, D.; Invernizzi, M.; Templeton, S.; Johnston, F. (2008) Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction, 4th Edition. Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall.
Cunningham, P.; Hall, D.; Sigman, C. (1999). The Teacher’s Guide to the Four Blocks: A mulitmethod, multilevel framework for grades 1-3. Greensboro, NC: Carson-Delosa.
Erickson, K. (2003, June 24). Reading comprehension in AAC. The ASHA Leader, Vol. 8, No. 12, pp. 6-9.
Erickson, K. and Koppenhaver, D. (2007) Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four-Block Way®. Greensboro, NC: Carson-Delosa.
Kame'enui, E. J., Simmons, D. C., Baker, S., Chard, D. J., Dickson, S. V., Gunn, B., Smith, S. B., Sprick, M., & Lin, S. J. (1997). Effective strategies for teaching beginning reading. In E. J. Kame'enui, & D. W. Carnine (Eds.), Effective Teaching Strategies That Accommodate Diverse Learners. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
See also:
Light, J. and McNaughton, D. (2006) Maximizing the Literacy Skills of Individuals Who Require AAC. Pennsylvania State University. AAC-RERC webcast. Retrieved Dec. 3, 2007, from http://www.aac-rerc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=153I (Rose-Marie Gallagher) can be contacted at don_gal_3@msn.com.
Your feedback is always valued. parents@aacinstitute.org.
