Author: Mary Cooney

Mary is a homeschooling mother of six. She blogs at mercyformarthas.com.

Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: A Parent’s Step-by-step Guide

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Teaching children with Down Syndrome to read is not rocket science. You just need patience, consistency, and the right materials. I’ve written many posts on teaching children (with or without Down Syndrome) to read, and I’ve shared many free resources. However, here I want to put everything in one place in a step-by-step guide. I want to make teaching as easy as possible for parents or anyone who wishes to undertake this seemingly daunting task of teaching a child with Down Syndrome to read.

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Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read: Phonics or Sight Words?

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Parents and teachers of children with Down Syndrome may wonder how to start teaching their students with Down Syndrome. Should they start with sight words or phonics?

Currently, the educational trend is strongly in favor of explicit phonics for children at large. However, many experts, such as Sue Buckley, Natalie Hale, and Terry Brown, and many reading experts in Europe who have extensive experience teaching children with T21 recommend starting with sight words first. This is true even in countries such as Spain, where the rules of phonics and pronunciation of Spanish are much more straight forward than English.

Here are five reasons why you should start with sight words, especially if your child is just starting kindergarten:

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Poems for First Grade

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Here’s a FREE book for poems for first grade that I compiled for my son with Down Syndrome. All my children have copied, memorized, and recited poems throughout their homeschooling years. So I certainly wasn’t going to let my youngest off the hook just because he has T21! Especially because memorizing and reciting poetry is so great for developing memory skills and working on articulation and pacing in speech. But most importantly, poetry fills the mind with beautiful imagery.

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Shared Book Reading for Children with Down Syndrome

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As summer rapidly approaches and the school year winds down, it’s a great time to think about easy ways we can keep speech and language moving forward. One of the easiest and effective ways is Shared Book Reading. If you have a young child with Down Syndrome, you’re probably doing it already to a certain extent. After all, reading a book out loud to a child is one of the most natural ways parents cozy and connect with their young ones. But today I’m sharing with you some ways to make that magical story time more purposeful and productive for a variety of goals.

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Teaching Spelling to Children with Down Syndrome

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Today I’m sharing how my son with Down Syndrome is learning to spell. Surprisingly, there is very little information online on how to teach children with T21 to spell, and particularly how to spell beyond the CVC words. So here’s a post about my favorite methods and materials for teaching spelling to children with Down Syndrome.

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FREE Spiritual Bouquet Cards

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The gift of prayer is sometimes the most cherished of all gifts. When times are tough, the prayers of friends and family can be a tremendous source of strength and consolation. This was definitely the case several years ago when our youngest was born and spent 3.5 weeks in the NICU. The outpouring of prayers and support was truly moving. One of my friends collected and assembled a spiritual bouquet from families in our homeschooling community, and it was so encouraging to know we had so many people praying for us.

So for the times you want to support a family member of friend with a spiritual bouquet, here are four cards you can download and print for free:

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Simply Addition Level 1 Flash Cards and Worksheets

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Using addition flash cards are a quick and easy way to help our kids practice the addition facts. For children with Down Syndrome and other visual learners, including a visual aid on the flash cards makes addition more concrete. I searched high and low for rekenrek addition flash cards with large numbers and finally ended up making them myself.

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First Steps with Phonics: Decodable Readers

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For those of you using First Steps with Phonics, here are decodable readers that give your students extra practice with reading. Decodable readers use phonetically controlled vocabulary to give students targeted practice with whatever phonogram students are currently learning. They are a great tool for developing fluency in reading. These particular decodable readers are designed for children with Down Syndrome and those with visual impairments.

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First Steps with Phonics: Blending Cards

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Here’s a set of extra large picture and word cards to help children with (or without) Down Syndrome learn to sound out words. Children with DS have poor visual acuity, which means they see everything in soft focus, even when wearing eyeglasses. This can impact their ability to read, especially if the font is too small. I made these for a student in our Down Syndrome Co-op who really started to make progress once he could see the letters.

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How to Teach a Child with Down Syndrome to Sound Out Words

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For all of you trying or wanting to teach your child with Down Syndrome to read, I have:

exciting news!

Scroll to the bottom of this post for that.

But first, this post….

Recently, one of the boys in our co-op was really struggling with reading. He was having a hard time matching and memorizing sight words. Furthermore, practicing letters and their sounds did not interest him at all. In fact, during our reading lessons, he was becoming increasingly inattentive. So I wondered, “What if he just can’t see the letters? And what if he knows his letters but is bored with them?” After all, he had been learning the letters and their sounds since kindergarten, and he was now in second grade.

So I made extra-large word and picture cards to go with First Steps with Phonics, Book 1. We began decoding words that only have TWO sounds as opposed to CVC words (ie. cat and dog) which require blending three sounds. And, by golly, he’s learning to decode!

Here’s what we did:

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