Strategies
Katims (2000) suggest some strategies to use to help mentally retarded students acquire reading abilities. They are as follows:
- (a) Observations of people engaged in literacy (a teacher reading to her students);
- (b) Collaboration with others in performing literate acts (making a get-well card for a sick friend); and
- (c) Practice with literacy materials (looking at books and using writing materials).
I plan to develop the curriculum using picture books that have been adapted to film, either as movies, or videos. The unit will be taught during the second semester after the students have had some on the alphabet, basic math, such as counting from 1 to 50, and learning to write their names. I think there needs to be prior knowledge of words and numbers established before undertaking the task of teaching the importance of children's literature using picture books and film.
Mercer and Mercer (2001) assert that "In an effort to acquaint youngsters with good literature and motivate them to read, some teachers use a literature based approach for beginning reading instruction. In this approach, trade books and children's literature books are leveled according to specific criteria." In order to help develop the student's literacy skills, I will provide reading materials at each student's level. The F.A.C.E.S. curriculum identifies the following literacy levels:
Pre-emergent
Emergent
Novice
Experimenting
Conventional
The picture books in the classroom library will have a variety of genres of children's literature. According to Sutherland (1997), "For preschoolers and beginning readers, picture books are enchanting." There will be books of fiction (made up stories) such as fantasy, fables, historical fiction, science fiction, myths, and poetry, together with non-fiction (informational) books about animals, famous people, sports and space.
The students will use centers arranged according to ability grouping so the student who has reached the novice and experimenting literacy levels can help the pre-emergent and emergent students. I will engage them in shared reading activities. We will use one of the picture books from the list located in the classroom activities section, starting with ones that do not have lots of words, and spend a week covering the words and pictures in an effort to connect these two forms of communication as concepts. It is important to read to the students so those who have not had the experience of travel or being read to as younger children can develop background information and appreciation of the alternative worlds in children's literature. As time progresses, students are expected to self select books to be read to them or to self read.
I will teach the unit with a focus on the genres of fantasy and folktales, using picture books with a variety of stories designed to hold the students' attention together with movies adapted from the picture books. I will also provide information about the talented and skillful illustrators of the pictures I will use with the students. By listening to me read the books many times, and looking at the pictures, they will discover the theme or big idea of the books and identify the various characters and the settings where the stories take place. I will ask them questions about the actions that take place in the story so they can come to understand what the "plot" is. This will help them understand the conflict or problem facing the characters. After they work through these areas, they will guess or understand how the problem was solved. I will use transparencies to show them how events develop, from the beginning to rising action to resolution or "climax" of the story and on to the ending. I will also use story maps to help them organize stories.
Students with developmentally delayed disabilities benefit from the same word recognition strategies at their non-developmentally delayed peers when learning to read; therefore I will use those strategies to teach my students how to read. They include the following:
Sight words: words that are known without using phonetic analysis
Phonetic analysis: using sound-symbol connection within words to sound them out.
Phonemic analysis: analyzing parts of words into sounds or phonemes
Syntactic analysis: using prior knowledge to decode unknown words
Semantic analysis: comprehending words in phrases and sentences that make sense
Learning these strategies does not automatically mean that the student comprehends what is being read. A test of determining comprehension is when the student is able to retell what he/she remembers from stories.
I plan to show the films adapted from the selected books after I have read the text out loud to the students, and after they have looked at pictures and understand some of the words from being exposed to the strategies I used to teach word recognition. I will stop the film from time to time as they watch and ask questions about what is happening in the scene or ask for an example of how the film differs from the picture book. They will use graphic organizers to complete this activity by scribbling, drawing or using cut outs from magazines or catalogs to represent the characters.
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