Research that Benefits Children and Families - Uplifting Stories

In my readings on research that benefits children and their families, I came across the following report in relation to reading and children with Down Syndrome.  It was very encouraging to see what research can achieve and the changes that can be made in the lives of so many children and their families.   Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.

Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read 

by Sue Buckley and Gillian Bird

Background

We began investigating the reading skills of children with Down Syndrome in Portsmouth in 1980 after receiving a letter from a father, Leslie Duffen, describing how he had discovered that his daughter Sarah could begin to learn to read at the age of three years. Sarah was born with Down syndrome. At three, she was just beginning to imitate and to use single words in her speech. Leslie taught Sarah to read on flashcards the words that he wanted her to be able to use in her speech and he observed that she began to use the words she had learned from the printed form at a faster rate than those she only experienced in the spoken form.

When Leslie wrote to us in 1979, Sarah was twelve years old and being educated in a local comprehensive school. She had received all but one year of her education in mainstream schools and was considered to be exceptionally able for a child with Down syndrome. Leslie felt sure that her exceptional progress had been the result of teaching her to read early and that other children might be helped in the same way.

We found Leslie's letter surprising and intriguing. His experience with Sarah suggested that pre-school children with Down syndrome could learn to read and that reading might be a "way-in" to language for these children. In 1979 children with Down syndrome were not thought capable of learning to read at all by most professionals and there was very little research into the reasons for their spoken language difficulties. We certainly thought that Leslie's observations warranted further investigation.

With a grant from the Down Syndrome Association we were able to appoint a teacher (Liz Wood) and set up a research study to begin to investigate these hypotheses. We followed the progress of fifteen pre-school children for three years while they received a regular home-teaching programme from us based on Portage.

Joanna, the first child that we tried teaching to read in 1980, learned thirty words in a month at two years and six months of age. It was immediately clear that Leslie's observations with Sarah might well apply to other children with Down syndrome and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation agreed to fund our work for a further year. The results of that first project have been published in full elsewhere (Buckley, 1985a) as has an evaluation of the "parents as teachers" aspect (Buckley, 1985b).

We now know that many children with Down syndrome show the same ability as Sarah to begin to learn to read at an unusually early age. Our own early findings have been confirmed in published studies by Greene (1987) in Ireland and by Norris (1989) in Kent. We also receive many letters and reports from parents and practitioners who have successfully taught pre-school children to read by following our advice.

Our experience suggests that the majority of our children can learn to read single words by three to four years of age, some even earlier. The youngest child that we have actually taught ourselves, Joanna, learned her first words with great ease at two years and six months of age. Joanna found the task fun and would learn new words as fast as we produced them and with very little practice (we have this recorded on video-tape in case any one is sceptical!).

Other children whose early progress we have recorded read their first words at the following ages:- Digby at two years one month, Emma and Daniel at two years four months, Zoe at three years five months and Jamie at three years six months. These children were all at the single word stage of speech, beginning to use a small number of single words appropriately, except for Digby. Digby began to learn to read before he could produce any spoken words. He demonstrated his comprehension by reading the flashcard and pointing to the correct object or picture.

All the children named above have continued to make steady progress with both reading and spoken language skills. They all have greater skills in these areas than is usually expected for children with Down syndrome and all started school at five years of age in ordinary primary schools.

At present parents are often the driving force and teach their child to read at home. All the children mentioned earlier in this article were taught by their parents, following our advice. The following extracts from a letter from a parent describes the benefits she observed for her daughter.

"I started to teach Emma to read after hearing you talk in Bristol seven years ago. She was then two years and four months of age. Emma is now nine years old and an able and avid reader. She attends our large local mainstream primary school and holds her own well in the second year junior class. She seems to develop in leaps and bounds. Being able to read has done so much for her.

"It helped her speech. For example when she began to read at age two, she spoke understandably but imperfectly as she left out the definite and indefinite articles, prepositions etc. The change came when she was able to sentence build in flashcards. Today her speech is mature and her teacher commented at the last parents evening that the extent of her vocabulary and her turn of phrase would leave many in the class standing.

"It helped in the way other children regarded Emma and not least her own self-esteem. They knew and she knew that in reading she was amongst the best in the class. This apparently less able child wasn't so less able after all!

"Emma is now an independent reader and books give her so much. She wakes early and reads for at least one hour every morning. She makes her own choice of book but everything she reads fulfils her - she chuckles when reading 'The Twits' and cries over 'Heidi'. These are her two favourite books at the moment and she reads them over and over again. Equally however she will read poems or her atlas, history book, nature book etc. from which she teaches herself. She loves her Bible. She is very proud when her five year old sister carries the newspaper to her and asks 'What time is .......... on the television?' . She is always able to tell her and I feel Sarah, who I feel senses rather than knows of Emma's differences , is thrilled with the sense of her big sister having the 'big sister' image for once."

References:

Buckley S.J., & Bird G. (1993) Teaching children with Down syndrome to read.  Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 1(1), 34-39.  doi:10.3104/perspectives.9

Down Syndrome Education Online. Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read.  Retrieved from http://www.down-syndrome.org/perspectives/9/?page=1