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What is the purpose of this website?

This website provides guidelines for teaching literacy skills to learners with special needs, especially learners with complex communication needs (CCN) such as:

• Autism spectrum disorders
• Cerebral palsy
• Down syndrome
• Developmental apraxia
• Multiple disabilities

This website provides information on:

• What skills to teach
• How to teach these skills
• Videotaped examples of instruction with learners with special needs

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Meet one of our students

Krista

• Krista has multiple challenges, including a hearing impairment, a visual impairment, and a motor impairment. She also has a tracheostomy.
• Krista has a dynamic personality. She makes everyone smile.
• Like many of her peers, she loves Zac Efron from High School Musical and Zack and Cody from the Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
• She uses sign approximations and a computer with speech output (a Mercury with Speaking Dynamically Pro software). Because of her hearing impairment, she does best when others sign as they talk.
• We started to work with Krista when she was 8 years old. At that time, she was in a special education class at school and was not receiving literacy instruction.
• Watch this video of Krista at 9 years of age. She is independently reading a personalized book about a summer adventure with Zac Efron.
• She is so excited to be a reader!
• Visit the rest of the website to learn more about how Krista learned to read stories independently.

Krista reading about Zac Efron from AAC Learning Center - Penn State on Vimeo.

Unauthorized copying, transmittal, or exhibition of this video outside of this website is prohibited.

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