Developing a Literacy Program for Children with Severe Disabilities.

Abstract

It's not easy trying to learn to read and write if you're a child with severe disabilities in U.S. public schools today. In fact, you have at best a 30% chance of being able to read and write as well as a child who can walk and talk but is otherwise just the same as you (Koppenhaver, 1991). You are likely to have one or more disabilities that make your world different from that experienced by your nondisabled peers: physical disabilities, severe speech impairments, hearing or visual impair ments, cognitive delays, or seizures. Your par ents have likely been so overwhelmed since your birth with your medical, therapeutic, and basic care needs, that literacy has been a lesser priority (Light & Kelford Smith, 1993). Your preschool teachers are unlikely to be aware of emergent literacy research or to in clude written language activities in your early intervention program (Coleman, 1991). Many of the teachers you encounter across your pub lic school career do not view you as capable of learning to read and write and consequently provide you with few opportunities to learn written language (Light & McNaughton, 1993). Even if you are fortunate enough to have teachers who view you as a capable learner and see literacy as an important part of your instructional program, you are likely to engage largely in word level skill-and-drill activities, seldom reading or listening to text and even more rarely composing text (Koppenhaver & Yoder, 1993). At the same time, you have unprecedented legal and educational rights. Public laws now entitle you to a wide range of early interven tion services and to education in a least re strictive environment, which is increasingly being interpreted as full inclusion in main stream classrooms. A national network of state

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