Session 9: Reading
Reading skills in individuals with Down syndrome
Susan Loveall- Hague, Assistant Professor Susan Loveall | College of Education and Human Sciences (unl.edu)
Contact: sloveall-hague2@unl.edu
Reading intersects with many areas of day-to-day life across the lifespan. Developing reading skills promotes language, learning, academic success, and employment opportunities and can be used in social interactions and for personal enjoyment. Thus, reading is important to many people in the Down syndrome community, including parents, caregivers, teachers, speech-language pathologists, other practitioners, and individuals with Down syndrome themselves. However, when compared to typical development and learning disabilities such as dyslexia, there has been much less research on reading development and the best strategies to teach reading to students with Down syndrome. This presentation will review the research on reading in this population, with a particular focus on what we have learned in the last decade, link that research to implications for education and clinical practice, and provide suggestions for what the focus of research in this area should be in the next 10 years.
Implementing the Reading Strand of the RLI: Insights from Down Syndrome Tipperary
Authors: Susanna Stokes: Speech and Language Clinical Specialist, Down Syndrome Tipperary.
Email: susanna@downsyndrome.ie
Background
In 2012, Burgoyne et al. conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 57 children aged 5-11 with Down syndrome. The intervention group, receiving 20 weeks of specialized reading instruction, showed significant progress compared to the control group. This research highlighted the efficacy of RLI.
Reading and language are interlinked, with reading supporting vocabulary, grammar, and phonemic awareness. Conversely, enhancing language skills can bolster reading comprehension and phonics. Despite this symbiotic relationship, and inspite of the solid research RLI seems to have dropped off the radar, implementation seemingly limited.
Research Question
How is the reading strand of the RLI effectively implemented in our clinical setting to support individuals with literacy difficulties?
Method
This presentation aims to elucidate practical implementation strategies, including organisation of reading materials, note-taking procedures, collaboration with schools and parents, ensuring carry through, garnering support, assessing effectiveness, and identifying areas for improvement. It will encompass a retrospective analysis of the clinic's approach, themes arising from 3 qualitative interviews with clients schools, and parents, and quantitative summaries of the outcomes so far for 12 clients.
Results
The presentation will delineate practical methodologies as well as insights gleaned from interviews, highlighting personalized intervention plans, provision of resources, sustained intervention periods, ongoing monitoring, and collaboration with stakeholders. Quantitative data regarding clients' progress in reading levels will be forthcoming.
Conclusion
The successful implementation of the reading strand has been instrumental in addressing literacy difficulties among our clients. Through a comprehensive approach grounded in evidence-based practices, we have achieved positive outcomes. This presentation offers valuable insights and recommendations for clinicians and educators working with children with Down syndrome, aiding in the effective support of their literacy needs
Parent-Delivered Early Language Intervention for Children with Down Syndrome (PACT-DS): A feasibility study.
Rebecca Baxter2, Kirstie Hartwell1, Emma Pagnamenta2, Vesna Stojanovik2, Kelly Burgoyne1
- Manchester Institute of Education, The University of Manchester
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK
Corresponding author: r.baxter@reading.ac.uk
Background: This paper reports a feasibility study, evaluating a parent delivered language intervention for children with Down syndrome. In Stage 1 of the project, we worked in collaboration with 6 families to pilot and adapt an evidence-based language teaching programme Parents and Children Together (PACT) (Burgoyne et al., 2018). This paper reports on Stage 2 of the project, where we are working with 30 families to explore the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the adapted programme.
Research question(s): To evaluate the feasibility of a definitive trial evaluating the PACT-DS programme with children with Down syndrome.
Method: Parents of 30 children with Down syndrome aged 3-6 years were recruited across two sites (Manchester and Reading). Following initial screen and baseline assessments (including standardised and bespoke measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary), the children were randomly allocated into either an intervention group (receiving 30 weeks of the PACT-DS programme) or a control group (receiving 3 x 1-hour general language training sessions).
Results: Data collection is currently in progress, but here we report preliminary data from the screening and baseline measures. An update on the current stage of the project will also be presented.
Conclusion: The expressive language skills of children with Down syndrome aged 3-6 years varies widely. We will discuss the challenges of assessing early language development and a range of factors that should be considered when selecting language measures for this population. Next steps in the project will be discussed.
Revisiting early reading in young children with Down syndrome – the practical and theoretical implications
Sue Buckley. Down Syndrome Education International, University of Portsmouth, UK.
Contact: sue.buckley@dseinternational.org
It has been known since the 1980s that children with Down syndrome can learn to read sight words from as young as 2 years 6 months of age often with surprising ease (1). These children may be at a one-word stage of language comprehension and production. Their sight word reading abilities can be used to develop their spoken language as the words chosen to teach them are words, phrases and sentences at their language level that they can use in their daily communication.
The early observations of the children's reading progress in 1980s recorded both visual and semantic errors. Semantic errors, for example, reading ‘closed' when the word on the card was ‘shut', when reading flashcards with no picture or context available. (This and similar semantic errors for several young children (3-5 years) are recorded on video). This indicated direct visual access to the lexicon – that printed words were being directly linked to meanings as they were learned. It also indicated clearly that how children read depends on what they know at the time. If the child had learned about letter-sound links, she would have known the word she was not sure of began with a ‘sh' so could not be ‘closed'. In fact, she paused, looked across at the door and said ‘closed'. As their sight vocabularies grew, children were extracting regularities including grammatical markers on words (for plural's and tenses).
Two questions will be explored
- What do these observations indicate about brain plasticity and different routes to the same endpoint?
- Why would learning visual representations for words support spoken language development?
(1) Buckley, S. J. (1985). Attaining basic educational skills: reading, writing and number. In D. Lane & B. Stratford (Eds.), Current Approaches to Down's Syndrome. (pp. 315-343) Eastbourne: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. ISBN: 0-03-910610-1.
(2) Buckley, S, and Bird, G. (1993) Teaching children with Down syndrome to read. Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 1(1), 34-39. doi:10.3104/perspectives.9
