My students need adapted guided reading books. My team and I will use these stickers and materials to adapt guided reading books for our students with intellectual disabilities.
The students in our intellectual disabilities program are making large strides in their reading abilities through the use of guided reading instruction. Unfortunately, adapted guided reading books do not exist.
Our 23 kindergarten to fifth grade students have mild to severe intellectual disabilities.
Our intellectual disabilities program is housed within a general education school where our students are able to interact with the general education students, and as teachers we are able to collaborate with the general education teachers. This year we discovered that much of what is "best practice" for students in the general education program is also "best practice" for all students, ours included. Our students love to read and love books. They also love interacting with their general education peers. We are constantly working on increasing the time they are able to be in a general education classroom.
My Project
This year our team of three teachers have discovered that our students can make real progress in their reading skills if presented reading instruction in a traditional guided reading approach with adapted materials. Our school has bought guided reading books that we can adapt this summer, but we are looking for materials to use to adapt the books. We will use the requested foam stickers in the guided reading books to help draw students' attention to key parts of the page, aiding in their comprehension, reading engagement, and use of reading strategies. As we increase their reading ability we will be able to apply those reading skills to harder, non-adapted books, as well as to using these skills in the general education classroom's reading workshop. So far we have seen incredible growth in our students when we teach them using adapted guided reading books. We look forward to more next year!
Getting adapted guided reading books into the hands of students who are thought to be "non-readers" is opening the door for students to see themselves as readers.
These materials will make it possible for these children to learn to read when others thought it was not possible.
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