Decoding is one of the most basic reading skills, and it is necessary for the simplest task of reading -- being able to pronounce words. You can help your students develop decoding skills by educating them on the phonics associated with each letter of the alphabet and helping them practice their sounding-out abilities. By putting extensive effort into decoding practice, you can prepare them to effectively tackle unknown words.
For many students with disabilities, vocabulary building presents a major challenge. To improve learners' abilities to use context clues to determine the meanings of unknown words, educate them on different types of context clues. For example, in some passages words are paired with synonyms to give readers a hint as to what the word means. For instance, a passage may read, "Much to the girl's chagrin, or dismay, she was not invited to the prom." By teaching the students about different types of context clues, you can help them harness the power of these vocabulary hints.
Students with learning disabilities can benefit from developing paraphrasing skills. To be able to paraphrase, a student must be able to take in information from a text and re-word it. This requires that he understand the text. If a student can paraphrase, this proves his comprehension of the text. Paraphrasing also helps learners better understand texts, as it gives them the opportunity to translate text into their own language, making it naturally easier for them to comprehend.
As students with disabilities acquire the basic skills associated with reading, they become ready to develop their summarizing skills. Through the use of summarizing skills, students can better identify the most important information in a text and create a shortened version of a text, something from which they can study later. To help students develop this important skill, guide them through highlighting the important elements of a text and later compiling them into a concise summary.