Reading for special needs

Reading for special needs has become an area of interest as the understanding of reading has improved. Teaching children with special needs how to read was not historically pursued due to perspectives of a Reading Readiness model. This model assumes that a reader must learn to read in a hierarchical manner such that one skill must be mastered before learning the next skill (e.g., a child might be expected to learn the names of the letters in the alphabet in the correct order before being taught how to read his or her name). This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner. This style of teaching made it difficult for children to master these early skills, and as a result, did not advance to more advanced literacy instruction and often continued to receive age-inappropriate instruction (e.g., singing the alphabet song).

During the mid-to-late 1970s, the education system shifted to targeting functional skills that were age appropriate for people with special needs. This led to teaching sight words that were viewed as necessary for participation in the school and community (e.g., "exit", "danger", "poison", "go"). This approach was an improvement to previous practices, but it limited the range of literacy skills that people with special needs developed.

A newer model for reading development, specifically with regard to early reading development, is emergent literacy, sometimes referred to as early literacy, model. This model purports that children begin reading from birth, and that learning to read is an interactive process based on children’s exposure to literate activities. It is under this new model that children with developmental disabilities and special needs have been considered to be able to learn to read. Note that there is limited research regarding reading in special needs, but this article attempts to represent the most current evidence on this topic.

Literacy refers to both reading and writing skills, writing being the symbolic representation of language, and reading the cognitive process of decoding and understanding the written symbol system. These are very broad and basic definitions as the definitions of these terms often vary based on the model or approach.

There are multiple models and approaches of reading. A few are discussed below.

The Simple View of Reading was originally described by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 and modified by Hoover and Gough in 1990. The Simple View suggests that the ultimate goal of reading comprehension, and in order to have good reading comprehension, you need to have good decoding ability (e.g., ability to interpret the symbols) and good listening comprehension (e.g., your ability to understand oral language). This model predicts four categories of readers. Readers with poor decoding skills but relatively preserved listening comprehension skills would be considered readers who are poor decoders, or dyslexic. Readers with poor listening comprehension skills are referred to as readers who are poor comprehenders. Readers with poor decoding skills and poor listening comprehension skills are considered poor readers, or sometimes referred to as garden-variety poor readers. Readers who have good decoding and listening comprehension skills are considered typical readers.

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