Reading Curriculum?

[4thgrdspedteacher]

Hi!

I know that Special Education students need to have access to the General Education Curriculum. I was wondering, if any school has adapted or developed a special curriculum or program to use with Special Education students.

My LD and ED students are reading one, one-half, and two years behind. In other words I am a fourth grade teacher and my students are reading on third and second grade levels and the "General Education Curriculum" reading book is not appropriate for them. Any one else with the same problem? What have you done?

[upnorthteacher]

There are many book series written specifically for students who are reading below grade level. Perfection Learning is a company with many that are designed as "high interest, low reading level". We also use the Houghton Mifflin remediated program called "Soar to Success" and an amusing series called "Gigglers".
I hope this helps.

[Boxcar]

You could also write your own books for the students. Once a week, it might be nice to pull out a book about the students in the class, thier community, or the classroom itself. The students can all have seperate copies, or you can read one copy together. This is accomplished through PowerPoint slides. Each student reads a slide aloud, and you turn the pages by changing the slide.

[dopey153]

I go to the off grade level curriculum (i.e. pull from the 2nd grade curriculum for 4th graders). I teach reading in the resource room for 4th graders too.

There are also books from Scholastic that rate the reading levels 1-4. They are high interest, low leveled readers. Their program is called Read 180. We used it at my last school and I loved the program. Planning was very easy, it was streamlined, and you can regularly track the student's progress.

[busbus]

For some of our special education students, Direct Instruction reading program is used. This is a program that emphasizes the teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics. However, teachers do supplement their reading program with "high interest/low level" readers. Depending on the age/grade, many of our teachers use some of the "Reading from a to z" booklets from its website, books from the Townsend series and books from the 100 Challenge library. However, in my school district, Elements of Literature is used in every school. So, our special education students use these books as well and teachers utilize accommodations to assist them with the reading.

[Elem.RSPinCV]

My school is a Charter and hasn't had to fully adopt a reading program, but my principal is really trying to get everyone on board with the Houghton Mifflin Reading Program. As an RSP teacher, working with students who are reading, like you said almost 2 years behind, I'm really excited, becuase there is so much I can use to support my students. Not only are there Support Handbooks and Blackline Masters, specifically for struggling students, there's also an ELD Handbook, Re-teaching masters, leveled readers, decodable readers, etc. I'm still in the process of learning how to use the adoption, and it's not the answer for all of my students, but most of them!

[mendez6]

Our district adopted the Voyager Reading Program for all SPED 4-8 grade. We use it in RSP and SDC classes. It is very researched based and scripted, but the results are good. The downfall is that it is complicated to teach correctly, and the students move through the stuff very fast....not like HM which spends days to weeks on the same story or genre...this program flits around all over the place up to four different ideas a day. It is hard top preteach or front load.