Building on the Strengths of Students with Special Needs

How to Move Beyond Disability Labels in the Classroom

Toby Karten

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781416623601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation inclusive

As a must-have reference for busy teachers with little special education training, this book supplies classroom-tested instructional strategies that address the characteristics of and challenges faced by students with special needs. Dozens of differentiated strategies target teachers' anxieties and provide responsive interventions that can be used to address specifics of IEPs and learning plans.

With Building on the Strengths of Students with Special Needs, special education expert Toby Karten focuses on specific disabilities and inclusive curriculum scenarios for learners in K–12 environments. She offers valuable advice on how to prevent labels from capping student potential and encouragement to help teachers continually improve learner outcomes.

By highlighting more than a dozen disability labels, this resource walks teachers through the process of reinforcing, motivating, scaffolding, and planning for instruction that targets learners of all ability levels. Included are details relevant to each disability:

• Possible Causes
• Characteristics and Strengths
• Classroom Implications
• Inclusion Strategies

Typical instruction needs to match the diversity of atypical learners without viewing any disability as a barrier that impedes student achievement. Teachers must not only learn how to differentiate their approach and target specific student strengths but also maintain a positive attitude and belief that all students are capable of achieving self-efficacy.

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Chapter 1

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Students with Dyslexia and Other Reading Differences

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The Possible Whys

Brain scans indicate that people with dyslexia have differences in a part of the brain called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is composed of nerve cells that connect and transport information and messages back and forth from the left and the right sides of the brain. Balance and communication between the two sides yields optimum learning. Each side—or hemisphere—is programmed to perform different functions. The left side of the brain sees things from their constituent parts to the whole. Someone who is predominately left brained notices the details before seeing the whole. For example, they may gaze at the night sky and focus on each star rather than see the big picture of the sky.

As related to reading, the left side logically lines things up in a structured manner to

• Match letters with sounds.
• Separate a word into its constituent sounds.
• Decipher grammar and syntax.

By contrast, the right side (often referred to as the creative part of the brain) sees words in their entirety as pictures, shapes, and patterns (not a mixture of individual sounds).

The characteristics of the right side of the brain are collectively analogous to gazing at the night sky and not seeing individual stars or viewing the ocean without seeing the crests of the waves. Words are composed of letters that make discrete sounds, but a student with dyslexia has difficulties understanding these individual phonemes. Faulty signals between the two sides of the brain result in an inability to decipher and interpret written language. Dyslexia tends to run in families, with genetic implications evidenced (Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003; Siegel, 2006; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987).

Characteristics and Strengths

Dyslexia has cognitive correlates underlying reading that affect phonological and orthographic processing, rapid automatic naming (RAN), processing speed, working memory, attention, and executive function (State of New Jersey Department of Education, n.d.). Simply put, phonological processing affects understanding, learning, and remembering how to associate sounds with the letters that make up the word and how to break up a word into its discrete sounds. Students with orthographic processing differences have difficulties learning how to form or copy letters and remembering sight words. Although letter reversals may be a characteristic of dyslexia, it is only a slice of the orthographic processing difference that a student with dyslexia experiences. At times, students with dyslexia confuse similar-looking letters and words and have difficulties encoding (spelling) and decoding (reading) words. Even though these characteristics are evidenced, a student with dyslexia is often able to tap into stronger modalities. Learners can decipher words through appropriate multisensory instruction such as touching raised letters to increase spelling skills, snapping or clapping out each syllable in a word to pronounce it, listening to a digital recording of a book, recording a lecture, illustrating concepts as a demonstration of comprehension, and using syllabication to break up more difficult vocabulary presented in an algebra, science, or history text.

Warning signs of dyslexia include—but are not limited to—differences in language, reading, writing, and social-emotional domains (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2015). Students may experience inaccurate or nonfluent word recognition. They may also be good word memorizers, but they're not learners who have cracked the phonetic code and "own" the individual sound-symbol connections they see and hear. Some learners with dyslexia get by in the early grades because they are excellent memorizers and can retrieve a file of sight words that they have stored in their brains. Beginning in kindergarten and 1st grade, these students exhibit low levels of phonemic awareness and cannot take apart the individual sounds that make up words. They also exhibit similar deficits with respect to phonics and an inability to learn the unique sounds associated with letters. Other types of reading disabilities include specific difficulties with reading comprehension and processing speed (i.e., reading fluency). Generally, students with dyslexia do not read with automaticity.

Dyslexia affects reading from the early grades, and primary symptoms include complications with the following literacy skills (International Dyslexia Association, Professional Standards and Practices Committee, 2010):

• Word recognition
• Spelling
• Reading fluency
• Comprehension
• Written expression

People with dyslexia may also display characteristics of other differences or disorders, which is referred to as comorbidity (Germanò, Gagliano, & Curatolo, 2010; Snowling, 2012). Ben Foss, an entrepreneur, advocate, and author of The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan, explains comorbidity in relation to his dyslexia:

Everyone in Dyslexia carries a passport that allows easy entry into a number of bordering countries, including the nations of Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, and ADHD, to name some of the major ones. In my view, we are all "in the club"—my catchphrase for the broad family of people who experience the non-obvious disabilities generally housed under the umbrella of "specific learning disabilities" … holding dual citizenship with each one of these. (Foss, 2013, p. xi)

This quote sheds light on the fact that dyslexia interventions need to be comprehensive ones that address deficits in reading, writing, mathematics, and attention, along with behavioral, emotional, and social domains. As an example, learners with dyslexia who evidence signs of dysgraphia experience weaker writing skills. These learners may be unable to accurately copy, organize, or read class notes. To capitalize on stronger modalities, offer these students alternative ways to capture information, such as a digital pen that records information, graphic organizers, or peer scribers. A student with a reading and math difference such as dyscalculia or an attention difference such as ADHD requires math and behavioral strategies as well as reading interventions. He or she benefits from a digital version of a math lesson to stop and then play back, as well as feedback for time on task, effort given toward mastery, and recognition of positive class participation. Acknowledgment of reading strides achieved and progress toward IEP goals is essential.

Even though a learner with dyslexia often has difficulty decoding and encoding words and formulating written expressions, he or she may be highly creative, possess strong personal skills, and have an excellent oral vocabulary. Nurturing these strengths with the appropriate classroom interventions is essential (Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, n.d.). For example, instruction and assessments are not exclusive to verbal and written ones, but they also include debates, cooperative learning projects, and multimodal engagements. Using technology to represent, access, and demonstrate knowledge minimizes some of the weaker characteristics that often challenge learners with dyslexia. The strategies in this chapter (and subsequent ones) are not only instructional but also have practical classroom, school, and "real-life" applications.

Classroom Implications

School staff require training in specific ways to identify students who show signs of dyslexia at early ages before their language processing difficulties spiral and multiply into additional academic, social, emotional, and behavioral domains. These concerns also need to be addressed before the reading demands increase. In addition, students who have advanced a grade—being socially promoted but are still educationally underserved—should be recognized as learners who require specific strategies to close their reading gaps.

School staff members need to collaborate effectively to intervene with strategies and interventions. As examples, a physical education, art, music, science, math, or social studies teacher needs to provide appropriate scaffolding. This includes interventions that do not permit a student's reading difficulties to interfere with successes (e.g., access to the content in each discipline and an ability to interpret the directions on a worksheet or an assessment, follow safety procedures in a science lab or gymnasium, and effectively answer a document-based question in social studies). Students should not be penalized for a diagnosed difficulty but instead offered multiple avenues of access, such as digital text, alternative reading levels of the same content, math word problems read aloud, science lab procedures verbally communicated, and increased visuals across the disciplines.

The primary characteristics of dyslexia include difficulty reading real words in isolation, decoding nonsense words, spelling, and accurate oral reading. The secondary consequences of dyslexia include but are not limited to inconsistencies in schoolwork with lower levels of reading comprehension and writing skills, and increased distractibility (Moats & Dakin, 2008). The secondary consequences often lead to frustration with school assignments and anxiety when students are required to read in front of peers (Torgesen, Foorman, & Wagner, 2007). Since staff members and students with dyslexia do not always understand the disability, blame is often incorrectly applied to an individual's lack of effort. A student with dyslexia requires the appropriate academic and behavioral interventions that honor his or her strengths. Weaknesses need to be remediated—not highlighted or magnified. It is vital to note that the educational practices for literacy instruction are never exclusively limited to students who have reading goals listed in IEPs or 504 plans but are applicable to all students. Learners across skill sets and grades benefit from systematic instruction that honors diverse interests and levels. Read on for more specific strategies.

Inclusion Strategies

Identify, Screen, and Individualize

Because students with dyslexia exhibit different characteristics, it is imperative that accurate screening continually drives individualized interventions. This includes informal phonics inventories as well as formal evaluations by trained professionals who determine skills through rapid naming of letters and sounds, identification of real and nonsense words, and activities around vocabulary, phonemic segmentation, spelling, verbal fluency, rhyming, and passage interpretation. Early literacy skills include—but are not limited to—knowing the sounds and names of letters, sequencing letters and numbers, and speaking in simple sentences. Levels of performance are screened with oral reading tests, checklists, parent interviews, nonverbal reasoning assessments, written assessments, and more. Alphabetic principles and phonemic awareness skills are often addressed as early as preschool. Screening for phonological awareness, rapid naming and memory begins in kindergarten, and testing in 1st grade includes word reading, decoding, and spelling. All learners across the grade levels who struggle need to be screened so they receive the appropriate instruction. Older learners also require screening, since high-quality literacy instruction is appropriate for high school and beyond (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2006).

Appropriately Tier Literacy Instruction

Educators also need to infuse multitiered systems of support (MTSS). In MTSS models, learners receive literacy interventions in tiers. There is no template for tiered literacy instruction since it is generated by the data. For example, a model with three tiers has all learners participating in the first tier: core literacy instruction. This core instruction includes an entire class learning together with a combination of direct instruction and literacy instruction in smaller cooperative groups. Based on progress monitoring, supplementary literacy instruction is provided to secondary groups of students who require additional literacy practice with skills for fluency, automaticity, and mastery. As indicated by formal and informal literacy assessments, more intensive instruction is given to a third tier with small-group or individualized instruction provided.

When students read slowly, their comprehension is negatively affected. They read each word so slowly that they consequently struggle to determine text meaning; they laboriously read letters and words, which interferes with comprehension flow and text meaning. Students who try to decode irregular sight words inappropriately (e.g., people, could, whose) lose the gist of a passage read. When this happens, it's important to increase oral and shared readings with the whole class, small groups, and individual students as appropriate. Interventions that offer increased guided oral reading assist with fluency. This includes learners becoming more strategic with both oral and silent reads (e.g., interest-related readings on students' instructional level and modeling) (Guerin & Murphy, 2015).

Strategies for fluency also change as students advance through the elementary grades. As learners advance, their reading fluency is affected by several factors, including the display of different skill sets and frustrations. The fluency of 1st graders is more dependent on listening skills, whereas reading fluency and comprehension play a larger role in grades 2–4 (Kim & Wagner, 2015).

Alternatively, for older students who require basic reading skills, present age- and level-appropriate readings with motivating content and appropriate vocabulary that is not insulting to a learner's age. Even though a secondary student may be reading at a primary level of instruction, do not offer juvenile text. For example, if short vowel sound instruction is required, then replace a sentence such as The cap is on the cat with a more sophisticated sentence such as The raft capsized on Saturday. There is no need for staff to rewrite texts since many publishers and online sites provide high-interest, lower-level text for older learners. Online sites such as Smithsonian's Tween Tribune ...