The Effects of a Text-Centered Literacy Curriculum for Students With Intellectual Disability

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the promise and feasibility of a newly developed curriculum to teach early literacy skills to students with intellectual disability (ID) and students with low IQs. The curriculum texts were written to include familiar settings, high frequency words, natural syntax, and cumulative practice. A single-case design was used with multiple baseline across levels of instruction and included eight participants who had IQs spanning from 40 to 63. The study was conducted across one academic year in two private schools for students with special needs. Results showed that all eight students demonstrated significant growth on proximal measures of taught words, as well as growth on at least some curriculum-based distal measures. Additionally, the program was demonstrated to be feasible; the teachers implemented the intervention with high degrees of fidelity and expressed satisfaction with the effectiveness and practicality of the program.

The Effect of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Challenging Behavior and Academic Engagement

“…Intervention sessions included a subset of FOTB activities (Allor et al., 2018) which we adapted to decrease the potential confound of session-based variation. Sessions were 25 min, four to five times per week.…”

“…First, these three studies included only seven students (five with ASD, two with EBD). Extending this research to include students with IDD is a logical next step, considering that CAI is increasingly used with this population (Kagohara et al., 2013) and challenging behavior is often a concern (Allor et al., 2018). Second, there is currently limited guidance on using assessments within this context.…”

“…We included participants who engaged in challenging behaviors during instruction and who were interested in technology based on teacher report. Teachers implemented paper-based and iPad-based versions of Friends on the Block (FOTB)—a comprehensive, text-based literacy intervention with emerging evidence supporting its effectiveness for students with IDD (see Allor et al., 2018; Conner et al., 2020). Our primary research question was “Compared to paper-based literacy instruction, does CAI result in lower levels of challenging behavior and higher levels of engagement for students with IDD?” Our secondary aims were to describe: (a) correspondence between data from preference assessments and response to intervention conditions, (b) maintenance of results during a “superior alone” condition, (c) social validity using information from teacher surveys and a student choice assessment, and (d) academic performance data across conditions.…”

“…Despite increasing evidence that students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) can acquire reading skills (Allor et al., 2014), their literacy achievement lags behind peers with other disabilities (Wei et al., 2011). One contributing factor is that students with IDD often engage in challenging behavior and display low levels of engagement during instruction (Allor et al., 2018; Geiger et al., 2010). Such behavior patterns may develop because specific instructional features are aversive, and challenging behavior effectively results in avoidance and escape from instruction (i.e., negative reinforcement; Geiger et al., 2010).…”

A Comparison of Children Aged 4–5 Years Learning to Read Through Instructional Texts Containing Either a High or a Low Proportion of Phonically-Decodable Words

“…They found that the children progressed more quickly with these texts than the decodable texts. A follow up study of students with special needs evidenced the benefit of using texts with natural sentence structure and prior learning of sight vocabulary (Allor et al, 2018).…”