Analysis of Literature
Lessons Learned from the Literature
- Little quantitative or qualitative research has been done in the area of accessibility for special education students as it relates to the school library media center
- SLMS and special education teachers should discuss the following questions concerning accessibility:
Are print materials the dominat or only learning options available to your students?
Are modified resources and curriculum materials available in alternative formats such as video, audio books, large print or digital format?
Is ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY available to students?
(Hopkins, 2005)
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“One out of seven people in the U.S., or fifteen percent of the population, have learning disabilities. Eighty percent of those people have reading disabilities” (Gorman, 1999).
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For a student with a reading disability, the school media center is an intimating place that often leads to frustration and humiliation (Gorman, 1999).
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Student Reading Study - McCray, Vaughn, & Neal (2001):
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A major theme that kept appearing in the surveys was that of embarrassment. The students expressed a great deal of concern about being ostracized.
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Most of the students’ descriptions of “good readers” were of those peers who excelled in word recognition and decoding, reading fluency, and basic reading comprehension
- In relation to opening the school media center to students with disabilities, this magnifies the need to help students understand that there are alternative ways to accessing literature that can allow them to still comprehend and enjoy reading.
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The study revealed that many of these students would like to do more for themselves, read more things that they want to read, and read things that are more interesting to them.
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Multisensory learning is one of the most successful teaching strategies for working with students with learning disabilities (Gorman, 1999).
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Janet Hopkins has written a great deal on the need for making the school media center a more inclusive environment for students with disabilities, and she asserts that “students with reading disabilities can boost comprehension with online literature summaries, auditory supports, such as screen reading software, and books on tape” (Hopkin, 2005).
- Hopkins(2004) asserts that assistive technology enables students with disabilities “to enjoy literature, research, and learning throughout their lives”, and that the school media specialist has the opportunity to help students with this technology.
Audio books also allow for scaffolding because they expose the student to literary elements that may correspond to grade level curriculum, but the student can still be receiving direct instruction on basic reading skills to try and remediate their disability (Beers, 1998).