This request focuses on the implementation of research-based instructional approaches, and effective instructional and learning strategies in special education classrooms to better meet the literacy and communication needs of students with significant disabilities, including students with:

• moderate to severe cognitive disabilities
• complex communication needs requiring augmentative and alternative communication tools and strategies
• multiple disabilities including deaf/blindness and/or physical access challenges
  

Resources provided through this award will focus on the following areas of literacy instruction:  

• Guided & Shared Reading
• Writing with alternative pencils
• Self-Selected Reading
• Working With Words

Making literacy instruction “robust” for students with significant disabilities and complex communication needs is the goal.

Students with significant cognitive disabilities are individuals with unique learning needs and interests who, with the right supports at the right time, can participate in their own learning, benefit from literacy instruction, and contribute to the school community.

While many of the students in specialized classrooms have experienced literacy instruction throughout their time in school, targeted instruction focusing on the foundational skills of reading and writing continues to be an area of need.  Students with significant disabilities continue to need regular, systematic, frequent, targeted instruction in the foundational skills of literacy well beyond the early grades.  When students with severe disabilities are provided with access to comprehensive literacy instruction, they can develop conventional reading and writing skills.