Session 18 - Keynote: Teaching children with Down syndrome to read: what we know, what we do not know and what are the implications for literacy teaching and for early speech and language interventions?

Sue Buckley, Down Syndrome Education International, University of Portsmouth

This presentation will provide a critical review of the literature on reading research with children and young people with Down syndrome over the past 40 years. It will also draw on the presenter’s extensive experience as a practitioner teaching children to read over the same time frame. It will consider how the research and practice findings compare and draw out implications for teaching children to read. It will argue the case for a paradigm shift in research, most of which is based on how TD children learn to read.  It will also set out the case for recognising that reading progress depends on children’s speech discrimination and production abilities and on their language development. This has implications for interventions from infancy if we want to improve children’s ability to learn to read, to master phonics and understand what they read.