Literacy in Special Education

 

Introduction

Literacy is the ability to read and write or the ability to communicate through writing, listening, and speaking. Literacy enables people to communicate, share their ideas and thoughts with others and this helps to create relationships. In special education, programs are developed and used to guide the daily teaching and assessment of the children to develop literacy.

The student population is special education 8:1:2 (Pre-K) and the objectives of the literacy lesson are that children can take turns and be able to wait for their turn. The other objective is that the children will be able to identify shapes using words and gestures. The lesson plan procedures are developed by the teacher (Graham, Berman & Bellert 2002). It includes singing the Tommy the turtle sang by TA1 with gestures and the hello song sang by TA2 respectively. The teacher then reviews the shapes on the pail poster of the shell game by pointing and saying their name. Then the teacher picks a child and asks them to show where the seashell is and the shape they pick. They are given a chance to respond and if they don’t, the teacher encourages the parent to physically help their child pick a shape and this continues until the shape has been found. The teacher’s role is to encourage the student and the parent to keep looking when it is their turn and the game continues until each student has found the seashell. Parents and teachers give praise to each student as they find the seashell.

The session is based on the children’s response to the activity and the teacher uses different strategies for each child and group. If a student cannot focus, some shapes are taken away and if students are moving around, they are allowed to have a toy until it is their turn. If the students are enjoying the session, it runs for a longer time. The differentiated instruction is that students are encouraged to say and point the shape on the screen and their parents will support their child to point. The game is practiced several times in a week and the lesson will be given to two groups of nonverbal and semi-verbal children in a self-contained classroom with a ratio of 8:1:2. Group 1 are students who can focus a bit longer and group 2 are students who

are focusing more on basic skills such as sitting, attending, and listening and they require to hand over hand assistance to point and make choices. For assessment of the student, student comprehension was consistently checked throughout the session (Graham, Berman & Bellert 2002). Praise was used for participation and also modified assessments based on their responses. From the assessment, realized that students were motivated and were eager to participate. For future lessons, I will be able to interact, support, and understand the students better which will make it more effective and fun.

Conclusion

In special education, programs and lessons are developed to guide the students on how to learn how to communicate and express themselves. The teachers use different strategies on different students based on their responses to the lessons. The teachers and parents give praise to the students upon participation which encourages and motivates them. In the future, this will enable me to be more supportive of the students and the parents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Graham, L., Berman, J., & Bellert, A. (2002). Practical literacy programming for students with

special learning needs. In Practical Literacy Programming. Primary English Teaching Association.