Transcript

For teachers new to Special Education, it's important to think about how you want to structure your program to best meet the needs of your students. One of the best ways I think that you can meet their needs is by tailoring the program to their areas of weakness and helping them remediate those difficulties. Since most of the kids we see in resource settings are struggling with reading and writing, it's important that they learn some of the fundamental skills associated with these difficulties. So that would mean instruction in phonological and pneumonic awareness, instruction in letter sound, correspondences, instruction in how to blend these letter sounds together to read words, opportunities to use their sounding out and other decoding strategies, to read short, phonetically predictable texts. Often, it's extremely difficult to find reading materials for children who are struggling. A lot of readers that say level one, actually contain a lot of very difficult words so it's important to make sure you're choosing materials that give your students the opportunity to be successful. It's also important that programs be systematic, that you're following a scope and sequence in terms of what letter sounds you're introducing, giving the students an opportunity to consolidate and master those letter sounds before moving on to more, giving them the opportunity to explicitly practice them in every session, and then use them to read short words both in school and at home.