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Disabilities
Overview Of the 64 reviews, 7 focused on the relationship of specific impairments to literacy learning and achievement. The reviews were published between 1976 and 2005, and considered the literacy development of children with speech and physical impairments, colour blindness, deafness, and cognitive-delays. Browning, N. (2002). Literacy of children with physical disabilities: A literature review. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy - Revue Canadienne d’Ergotherapie, 69(3), 176-182. The ability to read and write can have particular benefits for people with disabilities by easing communication, and providing better access to both learning experiences and career opportunities. Yet research has shown that those with severe speech or physical disabilities have, on average, poorer literacy skills than their non-disabled peers. By setting literacy as a priority, parents and therapists can ensure literacy-learning opportunities are provided to children with physical disabilities and can utilize assistive technologies to remove the barriers to literacy that these children face.
Hurley, S.R. (1994). Color vision deficits and literacy acquisition. Reading Psychology, 15(3), 155-163.
Colour blindness, both partial and total, may be related to learning deficits. Colour blind students may encounter problems due to the wide use of colour in beginning reading materials. Additionally, because it is difficult to recognize a color vision deficit without testing, the handicap may be overlooked, causing extra frustration to both students and teachers.
McCartney, E., & Wilson, S. (1994). Research report: early literacy and children with severe speech and physical impairment: A review. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 9(2), 200-214.
Providing varied activities centered on the use of print materials can improve a child’s ability to make meaning from print. Print activities can also facilitate the skills associated with learning to read and write. Print activities help both normally developing children as well as children with severe impairments. And thanks to the availability of new technologies to aid impaired children, a number of ways exist to provide them with stimulating and relevant print-related activities at the appropriate stages of their development.
Streib, R. (1976). Context utilization in reading by educable mentally retarded children. Reading Research Quarterly, 12(1), 32-54.
In the sentence, “The ___ dog ran up to the guest,” meaning and structure of the sentence (context) place limits on what the missing word could be. Normally developing children make use of context clues to help them identify words during reading, and better readers make better use of context. But, how well do cognitively-delayed children use context in word identification? Findings suggest that cognitively-delayed children can make use of context clues, but less efficiently than normally developing children. There are a number of variables that might limit cognitively-delayed children in their effective use of context, including delayed language development, short-term memory deficits, attention difficulties, lack of motivation and practice in reading, difficulty learning by discovery, and an increased focus on individual word analysis during reading.
Swanwick, R. & Watson, L. (2005). Literacy in the homes of young deaf children: Common and distinct features of spoken language and sign bilingual environments. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 5(1), 53-78.
Deaf children may grow up homes that emphasize spoken language, or the may grow up in homes that emphasize sign language. Spoken-language and sign-language families provide both similar and different environments for learning how to read. For example, they both tend to include (1) parents and children holding and looking at books together, (2) parents interacting with children in book-reading activities, and (3) children dividing their focus of attention between the book and their parents’ faces and reactions. On the other hand, while sign-language families may stress the visual representations of words or letters, and use finger spelling and signs to engage the children in learning to read, families in which language is spoken are more likely to pair the written form of a word with its spoken form and to practice phonics. This review explores the challenges faced in teaching their deaf children to read.
Wilbur, R.B. (2000). The use of ASL to support the development of English and literacy. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 5(1), 81-104.
Deaf children commonly have difficulty learning to read and write in English. Problems stem largely from a combination of poor early language skills and lack of access to appropriate instructional methods. However, deaf children of deaf parents who use sign language at home display less difficulties, because they have an established language prior to learning to read and write. In fact, deaf children of parents who sign are more similar to hearing children learning to read and write in a second language. Overall, knowledge of sign language is valuable in the education of deaf children, and should be taught as early as possible. Sign language can be used as a medium of instruction, and can provide a language basis for learning English. Teachers of deaf children should be trained in the structure and use sign language. As well, efforts should be made to improve the attitudes of all persons—deaf and hearing, teachers and student—toward sign language. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that signing interferes with the development of English speech, language, or other cognitive skills.
Williams, C. (2004). Emergent literacy of deaf children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 9(4), 352-365.
Early literacy development in deaf children can mirror that of hearing children. Contrary to previous thought, language delay need not prevent deaf children from participating in literacy activities that lead to the development of early understanding of reading and writing. One literacy activity in particular—repeated, interactive storybook reading with an adult—is effective in supporting the early literacy skills of deaf children, just as it supports the early literacy skills of hearing children. However, effective book sharing with deaf children may include different strategies than with hearing children, such as signing a word on a picture instead of pointing to the picture while reading the word aloud.
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