A literacy demonstration is an opportunity for a learner to show that he or she is able to perform a skill or set of skills in the context of a personal, real-life situation. We know that skills practiced in isolation don’t transfer when applied in a real life situation. It is therefore preferable to practice skills while performing a meaningful task.
In the next section of this guide, three example case histories of adult learners with learning disabilities are presented. Each case includes a literacy demonstration and accommodations. Individual learner goals within the case histories are based on common areas of interest to learners:
Skills ‘integrity’ relates to the need to ensure that if we provide a learner with accommodations, the learner is independently able to use a skill and/or to use it to learn a more complex skill. A skill lacks integrity when it does not allow a learner to do either of these two things. For example, an instructor may believe that they can ‘accommodate’ a learner who can’t spell by giving the learner the correct spelling or by correcting the learner’s work. This is not an appropriate accommodation; when the instructor is not present the learner is unable to produce correctly spelled words.
However, if the instructor teaches the learner how to use a hand held spell checker, or a computer spell checker, and ensures that the learner has sufficient knowledge of grammar, spelling rules, spelling tricks and other strategies to work out how a word is spelled, the learner is then independent. The learner still has significant spelling problems but can independently produce a correctly spelled piece of work. The integrity of the skill is then said to remain intact.