 There's a series of books by Presley and McWarton and they've looked at what are the secrets of highly effective teachers for kindergarten, for first grade, for second grade. And one of the things that they found is that good literacy instruction is good for all students. It's not just about students who are typically learning. And to bring it to the level for students with significant disabilities, Martine Smith is our literacy guru in Ireland. And she says the same thing. Good literacy instruction is good for all students. But then she goes ahead and talks about students, for example, who use augmentative communication. And she says, well, they may need more intensity. They may need us to adapt materials, but the bottom line is that the principles of effective instruction do not change. So what that means is we don't have to go look for these really obscure, alternate types of strategies. We can see what they do in general education. And then I have this theory about the three T's, and what we need is time, teaching, technology. So time means we're going to spend more time for students who are really struggling. A lot of times it's going to take them longer to respond, for example. We're also going to have to have some technology. It might be just very simple technology, such as iGaze, and it might be using iPads and computers accessing materials through switches. But the teaching is that all of our teachers understand the principles of effective literacy instruction so that then they can make those adaptations in terms of the technology and address enough times to make the students be successful in their learning. I'm very concerned that sometimes our students with significant disabilities don't have activities that we really expect high cognitive engagement. We have to have a high level of cognitive engagement in order for our students to be effective at learning. We can't just have them in Coast mode where they're just occasionally hitting a switch to repeat an answer that we just fed into the switch and they're not really thinking about it. So I'll give you a few examples. If I'm dealing with comprehension and I'm trying to support a student in learning to comprehend a text, I need to make sure they're trying to comprehend that at the whole text level. And I don't just read a page like, Johnny wore a red shirt. What color was Johnny's shirt? Where we read something and then we ask you a question immediately and that's short term memory. That's not comprehension. If I want you to comprehend a text, I need you to comprehend it at the whole text level. And I need to teach you strategies in order to do that. I also worry about what we call perpetual preschool, that we keep doing things for students long after it's age-respectful, that we have to think about having higher levels of cognitive engagement. For example, if you're working with a student who's over three, I hope you're letting them scribble. And if they're over five, I hope they're scribbling with the alphabet. And so many times we think, oh, well, she's not ready for the alphabet. Well, when is she going to be ready? We've got to engage that student in a higher level of cognitive engagement. I think that symbols for people who are non-speaking are absolutely amazing and they're just such a life changer. And I'm so grateful to Roxy and Terry Johnson and to Faith Carlson and to Jackie Clark for all of the symbols that stay developed because they've made such a difference in the lives of so many individuals. But what I'm worried about is that we've forgotten the lessons of the 1950s. And I know that most of the people watching this weren't even born in the 1950s. So let me tell you about that research. They did research on rebus symbols. They added these cute little rebus symbols to the words like cat and in and of and all kinds of words. And then they checked to see how much it was helping the students learn to read. And guess what? Not only was it not helping them, it made it worse. So we took a student who's struggling to read and we made them struggle even more because now what's happening is they're just looking at the symbol. And when you take away the symbol, they're toast. They can't read it at all. So if we want them to read the symbols, then we need to start de-symbolating. So for example, the word the, I would never add a symbol with it because the, the symbol is just an extra barrier helps students learn to read the word the as a chunk to see that as a visual symbol as the word shape of that symbol. Then when we start taking away the symbols from the words that we want the students to read, then they do start in fact learning to read many of them if we're doing good literacy instruction along with it. Taking away the symbols isn't going to fix it, but it's going to help them be required to actually focus on those words. And another issue is that it's okay to simulate the fringe words. So if I have a word like marble for a beginning reader, that's fine to simulate that word. It's not a high frequency word and it's not an easily decodable word. And so go for it, add that symbol above the word marble, but take away the symbols for the high frequency words that you want them to read. And if there's a picture support in the text for marbles, then again take that symbol away. So just think being smart in when we use symbols and even smarter in when we don't use symbols. That's my advice. The important thing is the classroom word wall is something that you are going to use. It's not just decoration. I see so many word walls that are just up there and never ever used in real reading and writing activities. So we want to make sure the words that we have up there can be used to help kids be really effective readers and very effective writers. So there are two rules. One rule for a word wall word is words that are really hard to decode but are very high frequency. So an example of the word would, W-O-U-L-D. Okay, let's decode that word, wold, no, sorry, it's would. Why? It just is. Pick words that are hard to decode but very high frequency. The rule two is pick words that are highly useful to decode or encode other words. So let me give you an example. The word in is a great word to have on your word wall because it's very high frequency but also in will help me read a whole bunch of other words like thin and win and sin and thin. So it's a great word because it has that high frequency word family. Problem with variety is hugely important for learning for everyone but it's particularly important for our students with significant disabilities. We know that the brain is a pattern detector and if we can put patterns on display for students in really clear ways and then help them find those patterns they can be successful. We're going to read a simple text multiple times for different purposes. So today listen so that you can identify characters in this story. The next day listen so you can tell me all of the places in this story. Another time listen so you can tell me all the feelings this boy had in this story. The research shows us from the National Reading Panel report that if you read the same story multiple times it increases your comprehension and it increases your fluency. So it's very powerful. Building background knowledge is really important for every student. Before you read a book it's important to have background knowledge for that text. But for students who have significant disabilities it's much more important because often they won't have had the extensive experiences. For example a student in a wheelchair who has very significant physical impairments just may not have had the same life experiences that a typically developing child has. So what we want to do is make sure that we help build those background knowledge experiences. If you're reading a book and we're trying to develop comprehension we want to have our background knowledge building connect to what we're going to do that day. What is today's purpose for reading this story? So if today's purpose for reading that story is that we're going to talk about the feelings that the student had throughout the story then we need to talk about feelings and we look at that story, we look at the picture and say oh bad day good day uh-oh this guy is going to have a day that has some bad things happening and some good things happening. So I bet he's going to have some different feelings today in this story. He isn't work so when you work let's say you're doing chores what are some feelings you have and now we're going to support those students in generating a whole list of feelings that they might have when they're working hard and we're going to model and we can do some prompting if the students are really struggling. We're using their communication devices. We're showing them where do I find feelings on your communication device and then we have for example an aide says oh I have an idea can I use your device Marcy and Marcy says yes and she says okay I've got to go to feelings let's see that's the masks here going to feelings you know what when I'm working sometimes I feel really frustrated so this teacher is doing a talk aloud and they say do I see frustrated nope I don't see it I need to hit the arrow and get some more let me see do I see frustrated oh there it is frustrated can we put that on the list because I feel frustrated sometimes when I'm working we're helping those students figure out where do I find feelings students and the teachers have worked together to generate and build background knowledge for whatever purpose we have today. How many times a day do we do high five to a student how many times do we say you're doing a great job you're working so hard and so before writing it's really important that we know what the students are writing about that we've set a topic for today's writing because otherwise I can't be informative if I have no clue what you're writing about I can't help look at what you've generated and give you informative feedback but if I know that today you were writing about the fact that your mother was gone for two weeks or today you're writing an email to your father and you want to tell him what you did this morning or today you're writing about going to the movie Shrek if I know that background information that I can give you informative feedback so before we write we set up a topic so that I know what you're writing about during writing I do give you that reinforcement feedback I tell you I'm you know say wow you're really working hard I don't do it a lot because I don't want to interfere but I give you a little bit of reinforcement feedback afterwards you stop writing and I say oh you did such a great job and then I start looking at it and I give you a value to feedback for example I look at it and I say oh my gosh look we were you were writing about the movie and I see an am here for movie or I can say oh my goodness I see some letters in here that are in your friend's names point to a letter and we're gonna see if any of your friends names and then the student points to the P and I say P oh my gosh P is for Patty we got to tell her Patty Jake wrote a P for Patty on it today when he was writing so I can find ways to give informative feedback if I know the topic and if I know your life and I can connect to your life it's way more powerful if we use informative feedback instead of just reinforcement feedback I talk a lot about teaching questions and testing questions and what I challenge you to do is just to go back to your classroom and be an impartial observer and see if what's happening is truly teaching or if we have a series of testing without the teaching first so let me give an example we read a book and then we ask a bunch of who what when where why questions that's testing that's not teaching because I did not teach you a strategy so that tomorrow you have a chance of doing better on those who what when where why questions than you did today instead I need to teach you the strategy for who that's before we read that story we're gonna predict what characters might be in this book we're gonna come up with a list of characters then we're going to listen and then you're gonna tell me what's characters were in it we have to be asking open-ended real questions so what's your name if I come into the classroom and I've never met you for me to ask you what's your name is very reasonable what's your name and I'm gonna ask it in a real voice if I'm the teacher and I'm trying to make sure you know your name I say what's your name I ask it in that testing voice and it's completely inappropriate because the students that they're thinking seriously because if you don't know my name by now perhaps you need another job lady you never ask a question to which you know the answer because it's pragmatically inappropriate so as teachers we have to become pragmatically appropriate I find it really interesting to talk about a tributing meaning to random attempts because often teachers feel like this is is is crazy this feels really uncomfortable but what we need to do is look at what we do with young typically developing children we attribute meaning all the time to typically developing children that child says dad dad dad and we say daddy he said daddy and the kid looks us like oh really but you know what it just became much more likely that that child was going to say daddy that child so is not saying daddy we heard it we attributed meaning it became more likely when a student is using a communication device and says something I attribute meaning so if we're reading a book and that student says who and now I attribute meaning I assume that they're asking a question about the character in the book and I say oh who well I think that was that dog that's the really bad dog in my book that's who it was and by doing that I'm telling them what does it mean to say who maybe that student didn't know that before and I can help attribute meaning by the time we have students scribbling but the time we get good communication systems in place they're a lot older and we feel like everything should be meaningful and they should just know how to do it no they shouldn't because they never got a chance to scribble with writing they never got a chance to babble with language and so we need to give them a chance to explore their communication sets and to explore the alphabet and to scribble and we need to be really good about attributing meaning so that it becomes very meaningful to them and so that they can grow and learn from their initial attempts that really weren't intentional possibly and that possibly weren't meaningful but we can add intentionality and we can add meaning and we can help them grow and learn I really love working with adolescents teens and adults and I am so sad to see the age inappropriate materials and so what I have people say sometimes is well I know it's not age appropriate but he really likes it and so my response is it's not just about age appropriateness because I know these people will also say well cognitively he's at 15 months so this is appropriate for him yes but it's not age respectful and so once I use that word age respectful instead of just age appropriate it's like an a-ha phenomenon it's like a light bulb goes off and people go oh wow I hadn't thought of that and when we had treat people with age respectful materials what happens is that other people start talking to them in more age respectful ways and I see students begin to gain more I feel like it's so crucial not to underestimate people with disabilities because we can never guess what's inside and there are students who have such potentials and students who might make a little progress that makes a big life change and I think we can't know that even though this student didn't learn to read because I've tried to learn to help him learn to read he developed just this joy of story listening and that enriched his life because we tried to write we built his vocabulary and so now he understands more things we talk about he never became a writer but his life was enriched in the trying and so we can't underestimate and we can't stop trying because we just never know where this journey is going to take us and we never know what we're going to find along the way that we never expected it takes us in a different direction sometimes and we didn't get to Banff but we found this other place that was pretty darn neat so keep trying and you'll get somewhere cool and you will have progress even if it wasn't exactly what you're expecting