Literacy Intervention for Children with Significant Disabilities: Interventions (Part 3)

Interventions for literacy in SWSD should consider where the student falls on the spectrum of oral language into literacy and move along the continuum accordingly. Phonics has been demonstrated to an especially effective  in supporting SWSD in literacy development. Stephanie provides practical activities to use in supporting literacy in SWSD. Stephanie also reviews how to incorporate AAC devices into literacy intervention.

Literacy Intervention for Children with Significant Disabilities: Bilingual Students (Part 2)

Unfortunately, the question of whether or not to support bilingualism in students with severe disabilities is still a common question, even among educators and other professionals. Stephanie presents the research that has demonstrated that bilingualism, even in students with severe disabilities, has many cognitive as well as socio-emotional benefits. In addition, students with severe disabilities are able to learn both language just as well as their non-disabled peers when accounting for development age.

Literacy Intervention for Children with Significant Disabilities: Teaching Considerations (Part 1)

Students with Significant Disabilities require special considerations to ensure these students can achieve as much as possible. One issue is the tendency for these students to become “passive learners.” How can we engage these students? Stephanie reviews research demonstrating how to most effectively support these students in their language and literacy development, such as by targeting phonemic awareness.

Increasing Executive Functioning: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 7)

Students and families from low-income backgrounds are at greater risk for stress, illness and other factors that make it difficult to be ready for learning in the class environment. For some students, the difference in expectations between home and school can be so drastic that it causes a type of culture shock. How can we ease this transition so that students are ready to learn? We can do this by explicitly teaching and explaining expectations, providing predictable routines, model and teach ways to express frustration and set daily, weekly and yearly goals. Find the other modules in this series below: Read More

Increasing Literacy in Adolescents: Increasing the Language Skills of Children from Low Income Backgrounds (Part 4)

Students from low income backgrounds are especially vulnerable to falling behind their literacy development as they become adolescents and move into the upper grades. As vocabulary and content increases in complexity, students without adequate foundational skills begin to experience more struggle and frustration with grade level material. It can be particularly difficult to motivate adolescent students, so Stephanie reminds us to be sympathetic to the challenges our students face and provides strategies to motivate and support adolescent readers. Find the rest of the modules from this series below: Read More