Literacy Learning Difficulties

The Prevalence of Literacy Difficulties:

• Descriptive studies have reported that between 50% to 100% of children with congenital CP, depending upon the degree of physical and speech impairment, cannot read (Asher & Schonell, 1950).

• 75% of those classified as severely handicapped and 100% of those classified as very  severely physically handicapped were nonreaders (Schonell, 1956).

• Even among children of average intelligence, across age groups and degree of physical impairment, approximately 50% appear to experience great literacy learning difficulties.

Possible Reasons for Literacy Learning Difficulties:
 

• Cognition

Studies of intelligence in children with CP report that approximately 60-70 percent demonstrate some degree of mental retardation (Batshaw & Perret, 1981).  However, standardized tests are often not reliable and do not offer valid predictive information regarding literacy potential.

• Physical, Sensory, and Perceptual Deficits

------ No connection has been firmly established between eye movement disorders in children with CP and reading difficulties.
------Perceptual deficits and sensory loss (e.g., vision or hearing loss) frequently accompanying a primary diagnosis of CP and can impede literacy acquisition.
------No significant correlation (.21) between articulation and sound discrimination in individuals with CP (Irwin, 1972).

• Home Environment

------Children with disabilities have fewer literacy opportunities, and when literacy opportunities do take place, they are qualitatively different.
------Access to writing materials and experiences is particularly impoverished.

• Nature of Instruction

------Wasson & Keeler (1984) studied twins: one with cerebral palsy and one without disability.  While each received 6 hours of instruction per day, 50% of the disabled student’s time was taken up by noninstructional activities such as transportation, feeding, toileting, and therapies.
------Koppenhaver & Yoder (1990) studied three adolescents: 30-42% of literacy instruction time was lost to nonliterary activities such as fixing the computer, booting-up software, and toileting.  The vast majority of instructional activities consisted of teacher and student working one-to-one on workbook pages.  Students seldom read texts of a paragraph or longer.  Students rarely composed texts (9 writing samples per school year).  Copying and spelling comprised 80% of the writing time.
------Koppenhaver (1989) studied a child with physical disability: 32% of instructional time was lost.
------Mike (19897) conducted 63 two-hour observations of five students with CP:  actual time spent on reading was about 15 minutes per day and there was little interaction among students.

Reading Assessment Strategies:
 

• Individuals with intelligible speech can be assessed in more traditional ways using standardized, graded reading passages.

• Individuals with severely limited or no intelligible speech can be assessed with direct selection methods using manual pointing, head pointing, eye gaze, or yes/no question formats.

• Maze procedure

• Instructional approaches to teach reading skills to all children:  phonics approaches, direct instruction tactics, language experience techniques, whole language approaches, etc.

------Koppenhaver et al. (1991) conducted a survey and suggested that the childhood school experiences of nondisabled children.  (Read or listened to taped stories; multiple readings of same text; regular visits to school library; purpose established prior to reading; regular access to in-class library; vocabulary instruction prior to reading; regular in-class silent reading time; teachers regularly read aloud to class.)

• Remedial teaching strategies such as diagnostic teaching and holistic approaches.

• Augmented Reading instruction:

 ----Story reading, combined with picture communication symbols that relate directly to the story.  (Boardmaker or Speaking Dynamically)
 ----Interactive-cued reading for nonspeaking students.

• Process-oriented assessments: observing and analyzing their reading and writing efforts, combined with ongoing recordkeeping such as the dated samples of students’ independent writing, sentence dictation, and spelling test results.

• Writing instruction with all students---Process writing:  prewriting, writing, and rewriting.

• Strategy instruction: goal setting, self-regulation, and performance evaluation.

• Functional writing:  making signs, writing invitations, writing on the classroom calendar, writing shopping lists, recipes, or birthday cards, writing friendly letters, postcards, letters of complaint.

• Augmented Writing

Computer-Supported Reading:

Programs with speech feedback may help disabled readers develop phonemic awareness, sight-word vocabulary, and decoding skills (Olson and Wise, 1987).

Computer-Assisted Writing:

Common word processors (ClarisWorks, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word) assist in the mechanics of writing: spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

Word prediction software  (Process Writer, Inspiration) can assist in the process of generating and refining ideas.

Talking word processors (IntelliTalk, Kid Pix, Write Outloud) assist students in the editing phase by providing them with auditory feedback for misspellings, missing elements in sentences, incorrect word forms, or missing punctuation.

Accessing reference material:

Internet and multimedia are new tools to assist students with disabilities in gathering and synthesizing information for their academic work.  Students can access the electronic encyclopedias, library references, and on-line publications through Internet.  Multimedia’s use of text, speech, graphics, pictures, audio, and video in reference-based software (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia) is especially effective in meeting the heterogeneous learning needs of students with disabilities.

Note Taking:

Optical character readers (OCR) such as OmniPage Direct or InWords software can transform typewritten material into computer-readable text using a scanner.  With this technology, a teacher’s typewritten notes can be read by a voice synthesizer, allowing a student with reading difficulty to review lecture notes in the same manner as reviewing a tape recording.  Microcassette recorders and VCR may also be effective for students who are not able to attend class for extended periods of time.  Notebook computers can provide high-tech note taking for students with disabilities.

Alternative Access:

AAC users can choose from a variety of alternative access methods to operate computer hardware and software for reading and writing. Some of this equipment may include switches, large membrane keyboards, on-screen keyboards, touch screens, light pointers, head-controlled access devices, and voice-recognition software.

Research Studies

Descriptive Group Studies
 

Correlation Studies