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How to Help a Child With Disabilities Learn to Read

For children with disabilities, helping them to learn to read is an endeavor in creativity. New readers are confronted with a set of abstract symbols that correspond to oral language. In English, these symbols are not very reliable, with its many exceptions to rules and patterns. Phonological awareness, the recognition that there are sound patterns and segments in language, is vital for any child learning to read. While helping a child with disabilities learn to read is influenced by the characteristics of that particular child's disability, paying attention to phonological awareness through multisensory instruction can provide the child with tools to become a successful reader.

Things You'll Need

  • Blank strips of paper
  • Pencil or pen
  • Scissors
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Instructions

    • 1

      Select a kid-friendly text--a poem or song--with rhyming words. Read or listen to the poem or song. Multiple readings or listening encourages the child to read or sing along and develop a sense of what rhyming words feel like in her speech muscles. Pull rhyming words from the selected text and exchange rhyming words with the child; either you or the child can lead. For example, the first person says, "child" and the second person responds, "wild." Continue exchanging rhyming words for five minutes. Including a ball or some other toy to toss back and forth introduces a tactile element and can reinforce the rhythm of the game.

    • 2

      Read a book to the child. Ask the child to choose a sentence, or several, from the book and copy them down onto a strip of paper. Help the child to include appropriate capitalization and punctuation. Segment the sentence into words by cutting the strip into individual words, include whatever punctuation is closest to a word with that word. Ask the child to reassemble the sentence, like a puzzle, and then to read it out loud.

    • 3

      Choose a group of words, a word family, to examine in detail with the child. Work on orally blending sounds: the beginning sound and common "chunks" of words. For example the words kit, bit, sit, hit, pit each have a common chunk, "it," and different beginning sounds.

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