Characteristics and strategies chart
The following information was adapted from Bridges to Practice: Guidebook 1
Preparing To Serve Adults With Learning Disabilities. Washington, D.C.: National
Adult Literacy and Learning Disability Center. 1999 at
http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/ld/bridges/materials/bridges_docs.html; Ontario
Literacy Coalition. Learning Disabilities: Best Practice and Innovations. Toronto,
ON: Ontario Literacy Coalition. Issue 3 of 3, 2001.; Johnston, Janet. Literacy and
the Learning Disabled Adult. St. Catharines, ON: Learning Potentials. 1994.
Reading characteristics |
Potential Strategies |
| Engages in leisure activities
other than reading; prefers more
active pursuits. |
Discuss with learners why they have limited
interest. Find out about other interests and begin
introducing material that is related to their
interests. |
| Cannot easily use materials like
newspapers and classified ads to
obtain information. |
Demonstrate how the documents are organized.
Provide reading comprehension strategies such
as PASS, questioning and paraphrasing and
provide a step-by-step process to search the
material in an organized manner. |
| Does not attempt to sound out
words in reading or does so
incorrectly. May read words
with syllables backwards (was
for saw; net for ten) |
Introduce phonetic strategies such as word-to-word
matching, blending and overt word parts.
Build a list of words that are challenging to help
learners to learn to self-monitor by watching for
reversals and encourage learners to self-correct. |
| May encounter a newly learned
word in a text and not recognize
it when it appears later in that
text. |
Before reading, pre-teach unfamiliar but
important words, during the reading have
learners add new words to a list and after
reading have learners review the words and use
their own words to explain the meaning. Use
word-building strategies to teach prefixes,
suffixes and combining words. Use the illustrate
and associate strategy for synonyms, antonyms,
and analogies. Have them build their own
dictionaries of new words. |
|