Tag: literacy

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

Published on by Mary CooneyLeave a comment

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

Published on by Mary Cooney2 Comments

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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Ten Tricks for Motivating and Engaging Children with Down Syndrome

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How many times have you called your child/student with Down Syndrome to come and do some school work and that child balked or refused to co-operate? Sigh. Yes, in our little homeschool and co-op it’s a common occurrence. But necessity is the mother of invention, so I’ve learned many ways to motivate my son and his little friends. I really believe that what most hinders our children with DS from learning is not intellectual delay/disability, but non-compliant behaviors. So to help elicit co-operation, here are my latest tricks for motivating and engaging children with Down Syndrome:

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First Steps with Phonics, Book 4: A FREE Phonics Workbook for Children with (or without) Down Syndrome

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Here’s the fourth and final book in the First Steps with Phonics Workbook series, designed especially for children with Down Syndrome.

While most phonics programs begin with CVC words, this introduction to phonics begins with something even easier: the phonograms that make one and only one sound. Book 1 teaches children to sound out and spell words that have the phonograms AY and AI. Book 2 teaches the phonograms EE and IGH. Book 3 focuses on the phonograms OA and OE. And Book 4 teaches the phonogram EIGH.

Here are samples from Book 4:

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First Steps with Phonics, Book 3: A FREE Phonics Workbook for Children with (or without) Down Syndrome

Published on by Mary CooneyLeave a comment

Here’s Book 3 of First Steps with Phonics!

This is an incremental, picture-based introduction to phonics designed for children with Down Syndrome. It’s both Orton-Gillingham and Montessori friendly! Read more about this program and watch some videos here.

If your child is struggling with phonics, give these workbooks a try!

If your child hasn’t started with phonics, here’s an easy way to start for both parent and child.

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Construction Vehicles Three-Part Cards

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About this time last year, my son was really into all the Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site books. We read them over and over again. So I decided to make him Construction Vehicles Three-Part cards.

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