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For many children, literacy skills begin
early in development. As toddlers, children
begin to display fundamental literacy skills
like holding books correctly, proper page
turning, guiding eyes from left to right, and
drawing and tracing letters. It is in these
experiences that children begin to understand
and attain the rules of reading and writing. |
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There are many children that do not acquire or
grasp these experiences and are therefore at
risk for not developing strong literacy skills
to be academically successful. This is
particularly true for children with limited
verbal expression who use an Augmentative and
Alternative Communication (AAC) system. Often,
such children have delayed literacy development
for a variety of reasons such as medical and
physical concerns, the individual’s capacity for
learning, and having reduced time and experience
with shared reading and writing activities with
adults.
To successfully increase literacy skills for the
child with reduced verbal output using an AAC
device, teachers, speech-language pathologist’s,
and the families of these individuals need to
employ the following: |
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۰Promote
left to right reading and scanning of everyday print
materials (books, food packages), |
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Set up the AAC system to have left to right,
grammatically correct, and meaningful statements, |
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۰
and Combine picture symbols and words together to offer
the child additional exposure to the letter
representation of target words. |
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One of the most significant challenges of
working with a child with limited verbal
expression is that they lack experience with
making sounds and subsequently phonological
skills are depressed.
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Despite having this deficit,
phonological approaches should still be encouraged to
increase their understanding of sounds into the print
representation. In addition, whole word reading from the
perspective of environmental reading, personal
relevance, and standard sight word knowledge should also
be encouraged to increase the acquisition of specific
vocabulary words and reading fluency.
Continued on page 3
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