Learning to Read the Junior Way (repost from 1/6/10)

I first posted this back in January of 2010 and recently did an update to the bottom of the post so decided to repost it.  This was the first post done on this blog. 


This week we are trying to get back into the swing of things after the holiday break. I was sorting through Junior's reading activities to prepare for the next few months and thought I would share some of those. With a child who is non verbal(for the most part, he does have a few words) and unable to move his hands it can be a challenge to not only teach him the basics but also to figure out what he is understanding. For Junior eye gaze is his primary mode of communication but using a work book with him is impossible. Not only is he distracted by the many other things on the page there is no way for me to tell what exactly he is looking at.
So I looked through many, many books and curriculum, and ended up going with this one.
The pages were still far too cluttered for Junior and repetition is a necessity. We enlarged the different activities then laminated them and added velcro. This way Junior can easily focus on what we are doing and I can tell if he is choosing the correct answer. We can also do them over and over if needed*(any copies I have made of the pages in the book are used solely for Junior who the book was purchased for)*
I am also using hooked on phonics with Junior but again everything is too small and it was impossible to tell if Junior was actually reading what was on the pages. I enlarged the little readers then did enlargements of the pictures by themselves and laminated them. I also did the same with the sentence on each page. Now Junior can use his eye gaze to tell me which picture goes with the sentence and I have a way to know what he is reading and understanding.

This is how we set up his felt board with the sentences and pictures

Combining the ipad and felt board to work on reading skills

It has been awhile since I did this post but Junior still uses much this method to work on his reading.  We have gradually moved to doing more and more of his reading on the ipad and I don't spend as much time enlarging pages and laminating things.
He is now working on blends and longer words instead of just 3 letter words with short vowel sounds.  

He uses many apps now to work on reading and typically we combine with his felt board.  The app pictured is one of the abitalk apps and we have several from that series.  He has to look at the fish with a specific vowel sound, blend, starting letter, etc.   Some of our other favorite reading apps are Word Magic, Teach Me Kindergarten, Teach Me 1st Grade, Teach Me 2nd Grade, Word Wizard, and Magnetic ABC.  There are several others we use but those are our most used. 

We also use various games were Junior matches a picture and word.  Here he is "fishing for words".  He catches a fish(they have magnets) with his pole then matches the picture on the back to a word on his ipad. 

In these specific pics he had caught a fish with the pic symbol for help on it and was matching the word.  Junior gets bored easily so we never stay on one thing very long and if we can turn reading into a game then he will stay focused much longer.  The ipad has allowed us to see that Junior is much further along in his reading then we realized. 

 

We have tried words like friend, family, computer, sunshine, doctor etc. and were amazed that though we had never worked on those words he had no problem picking them out of a group of 4 when asked(on his ipad).   He also continues to use the curriculum for reading which is at the top of this post(just the next level of it) though we are now just working through the book and using the ipad to allow him to do the book work.