Teaching Phonological Awareness to Students with Mental Retardation

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Teaching Phonological Awareness to Students with
Mental Retardation

• Phonemes are speech sounds
• Ability to segment, blend, rhyme, and manipulate
  phonemes
• Exploration of letter-sound relationships,
  decoding skills, word recognition

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Introduction

• indispensable ingredient
• Instruction in social, vocational, and
  independent living skills
• Literacy development is decontextualized and
  relies on drill and practice
• Reading and writing is essential in all domains
  of education and life

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Research

• New approaches use constructivist and integrated
  perspectives
• Letter-sound segmenting and blending
• Analogizing (word families) and rimes/onsets
• Emphasis on multimethod approaches

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Research continued

• Support for tradition approaches
• Phonetic-prompt, whole word error correction,
  sight words, word wall, isolated word work
• Reading approaches - aloud, paired, etc.
• Guided comprehension before, during, and after

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Personal reflection
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My interesting thing to share

• Observations in two practicum settings
• Kalamazoo placement vs. Battle Creek placement

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Conclusion

• There is no one right way to teach phonological
  awareness
• It is best to use several approaches
• Expose students to phonics and literacy as much
  as possible