About 6000 babies are born with Down syndrome every year in the United States. That means one in every 700 babies. Many of these children will grow up to go to school, go to work, vote and engage in relationships.
Teaching students with down syndrome to read is important if they are to participate in society and enjoy a meaningful life. Follow these tips to facilitate learning from an early age.
Teaching Students with Down Syndrome
There was a time when many professionals and even parents would have regarded teaching reading skills to children or adults with Down syndrome as a pointless exercise. Studies have now confirmed that those that persisted with teaching their Down syndrome children were right to do so.
The evidence is that many young people with Down syndrome respond very well to the teaching of reading skills. In fact, not only do they acquire reading skills but they also experience many other benefits. They have improved speech, better language ability, and stronger cognitive skills.
There is evidence that learning words on flashcards result in the use of these words in the speech of students earlier than would be expected otherwise. Two and three-word reading activities result in earlier use of two and three-word utterances in speech too. Even if these early development achievements are not associated with great progress in reading, the benefits for speech make them well worthwhile in any case.
Starting Early
The lesson of research is that starting early is beneficial. This might be counter-intuitive. After all children with Down syndrome typically start speaking later than other children.
There is a range of different abilities and experiences with children with Down syndrome. It is not unusual for the use of language and speech to be delayed. Vocabulary develops more slowly and mastering the rules of grammar can be more difficult than for other children.
The result of these difficulties is that when speech is acquired it can be somewhat simplified. Words are left out of sentences making it difficult for people not used to this to understand.
While many parents and teachers of Down syndrome children will relate to the challenges of developing reading skills in their children and students, many will also have experience of triumphs. Many students can achieve great things—including attending mainstream schools or graduating from college.
Just as reading progress varies with mainstream children, don’t expect an early start to result in early progress with a child with Down syndrome. The only way to determine when the right time to start teaching reading skills is to try it. Because of the impact on the speech of early teaching of reading skills, there cannot be a downside to starting early.
If you keep it fun and engaging, any lack of progress never becomes frustrating. Having print in the everyday environment can also make it feel natural and comfortable. Place labels on everyday objects and refer to them naturally and playfully and notice if they become significant to the child.
The lesson is that starting early is the right way to help these special students to achieve their potential.
Teaching Students with Down Syndrome a Range of Abilities
The range of abilities among people with Down syndrome is so large that it is counterproductive to generalize. If we do look for common factors it is probably that people with Down syndrome need more time to process information.
Reduced hearing ability means they may need more repetition. More visual and tactile information is also helpful to support their processing of information.
People with Down syndrome can also have hearing and visual impairment. Anyone teaching to read has to consider these impairments. Together with patience and skillful teaching, students may need the assistance of some technology and other aids.
Getting Started
Before acquiring reading skills, comes speech and the love of books. These pre-literacy developments can be associated with literacy skills at a very early stage.
People with Down syndrome typically prefer visual learning especially if they have hearing difficulties. This can mean that more traditional phonetic or phonics approaches can be problematic. More success might be achieved by a sight-word approach associated with phonics rather than an exclusively phonetic approach.
Don’t be too prescriptive about the pace of learning or when certain stages should be achieved. It’s unlikely that skills will develop along a linear route. The experience of Down syndrome students tells us that there can be slow progress followed by breakthroughs rather than conventional timelines.
Key Strategies for Teaching Students with Down Syndrome
Because Down syndrome students prefer learning visually, make the most of visual cues. Multi-media tools can be especially helpful. Use graphics and video, colors, and shapes.
Break teaching into small chunks of activity. Take frequent breaks and don’t rush back to teaching. Be sensitive to the pace your student responds best to.
Encourage incremental learning. Build on each short session. Add a little more each time and consolidate what has gone on before.
Teaching should be structured. Don’t change the approach frequently. A consistent predictable pattern will help your student.
Make it fun. Incorporate games and play into the reading teaching. For example, play a game using flashcards or match pictures to words.
First Flash Cards
The first words to use on flashcards can be the names of family members and words for objects that the child knows already. Print words neatly in lower case. Don’t complicate matters with pictures at this stage.
Play matching games with the flashcards. For example, take a card marked “cup” and match it to a physical cup. Perhaps take a drink too!
Ask your student to select the flashcard marked “dog” when asked for it by name. Develop the skills by asking your student to name the card. This process of matching, then selecting, and finally naming the cards will become easier.
This approach leans heavily on the Down syndrome student’s preference for visual learning. The aim is to develop a sight vocabulary. Add more cards and words to build the vocabulary.
Motivation
Research shows that children with Down syndrome are sensitive to failure. They can be quite ingenious in developing strategies for avoiding learning and parents and teachers can find themselves colluding with students in this. The distraction from difficult learning activities into other less demanding activities may be more pleasant but results in a lack of developmental progress.
An approach that helps maintain motivation is “errorless learning”. This approach involves teaching that guides the student through each step of learning by promoting the student so that they do not fail. As the student becomes better at the task the teacher reduces the guidance until there are no prompts whatsoever.
This approach stops wrong guesses from emerging and correcting those guesses. Down syndrome students can be sensitive to failure and this approach avoids this demotivator. It establishes a positive atmosphere where learning is not associated with getting things wrong but with success.
Moving on to New Words and Phrases
Once progress is made with the sight vocabulary flashcards additional words can be added. These may not be words that are in the student’s verbal vocabulary. Play games with these words that teach them the meanings and incorporate the words into sentences.
Add words and phrases so you can create sentences that you and your student can practice together. Put together phrases and sentences that meet the student’s own communication needs.
Make picture books with associated sentences to develop grammar and syntax. Use the student’s own experiences to get ideas for the books’ subjects. Over time, these words, phrases, and sentences can help the student communicate more clearly.
Sight Vocabulary and Phonics
The sight vocabulary approach relies on the student recognizing the image of the whole word and making the cognitive leap from that image to the meaning. There is no intermediary step where the sound of the word is worked out from the letter sounds.
You may notice a student making slight errors that demonstrate this. For example, a child might see the flashcard with the word “sleep” and say the words “bedtime”. The meaning is approximately right but it doesn’t bear any relation to the letters.
Being able to work out an unfamiliar word from its letters alone relies on sounding out the letters. Most children with Down syndrome are capable of learning how to sound out letters. Phonics is probably essential for writing and spelling skills later in literacy development too.
Progress from a successful sight vocabulary approach to a phonics approach. Use the words the student is familiar with from the sight vocabulary pointing out the letter sounds. Start to introduce new words and phrases as their ability with letter sounds develops.
Skill for Life
The life expectancy of people with Down syndrome has improved from 25 in 1983 to 60 today. People with Down syndrome expect to participate in society. Their friends and families are often very supportive of this too.
Literacy is an essential skill for life and an enabler for participation in society. Teaching students with Down syndrome to read means they have better language and cognitive abilities and this impacts the quality of their lives.
Learn more about literacy skills and special education here.
