GREAT CLASSROOM SUPPORT FOR READING, Part 2

7 More Essentials for Best Practice in the Classroom

Last week, I invited you to dream with me and imagine ideal classroom support for our emergent readers with Down syndrome. I gave you 7 essential best practices to start with, practices that are absolutely at the core of giving our children an enormous leg up. We want reading to be fun, to be as easy as possible, and to be tremendously successful. So let’s keep going and look at 7 more dreams we want to see materialize in our child’s classroom:

1. Comprehension questions are rigged to set up the child for success. The educator is aware of short-term auditory memory deficits in the child with Down syndrome, so rigs the sentence so the answer is near the end. Eventually, this is phased out, but not in the beginning of comprehension training. Example: “The dog is chasing the cat. The cat is black.” “What color is the cat?” “Black.” (The child remembers the last thing heard.)
2. Phonics training comes after some sight word success is established. Training in phonics, other than letter sounds and names (start in toddlerhood!), begins after the child has built a confident beginning sight vocabulary of at least 50 words.
3. Reading support materials are varied to keep the child’s interest alive; fresh new material is mixed in with old material not yet mastered.
4. Errorless Testing is used to build confidence and avoid failure.
5. “If it don’t work, fix it.” If the in-place teaching method isn’t working, the educator switches tracks and tries other approaches; she avoids the attitude that the child with Down syndrome can’t learn. She looks to identify stumbling blocks and works to remove them.
6. Educator has an open attitude to trying materials designed for Down syndrome. (Special Reads for Special Needs; The Learning Program of the DSFOC; See and Learn of DSEUSA; Love and Learning, etc.)
7. Materials/supports designed for Down syndrome are delivered in the classroom, not used as an excuse for pull-outs, as in the case of inclusion classrooms.

And here’s an extra one:

1. Educator is an avid reader of the reading blogs on this site! I just had a group Skype consultation with 5 educators in Canada, and it was fabulous to hear the lead teacher say, “Yes, I read this…and this…and this on your blog site.” She was ‘waaay ahead of the game. Way to go, Canada!

Let’s make this dream a reality…and if you want to read my “how to” blogs on any of the above topics, just use the “search the blog” box on this page to the right, and type in “comprehension, errorless testing, etc.”

Here’s to dreams becoming realities!