Literacy Learning for Students with Disabilities

Catalog description

The course includes an introduction to methods for teaching early literacy skills to primary grade readers, including emergent literacy, the development of the alphabetic principle, concepts about print letter-sound patterns, comprehension of connected text, vocabulary, fluency and writing. Teacher candidates will learn classroom-based assessments to evaluate student learning in these areas, including such things as concepts of print interviews, running records, miscue analysis, informal reading inventories, fluency checks, oral retelling rubrics and rubrics to assess strategy use. Many approaches to teaching reading are examined, including basal, literature-based, individualized, reading workshop, guided reading, and language experience. Teacher candidates will learn how to develop a community of learners in a classroom where the teacher interacts with the children while differentiating instruction in the regular education classroom, particularly for students of diverse backgrounds, including students with disabilities. Within this framework, candidates will study interventions that focus on students who will benefit from highly structured, explicit instruction in reading, writing, mathematics and other content areas. Interventions, methods and programs for small groups and individualized instruction will be evaluated. Common application in Response to Intervention plans will also be discussed. Systems that may be investigated include, but are not limited to, Multi-sensory Instruction, Direct Instruction and explicit instruction. Includes 14 hours (minimum) of school laboratory time utilizing direct instruction programs with students. Open to special education majors only.