Functional Academics:

Reading
Suellen Concessio Fernandes
Education?
Academics?  Education is gathering all the knowledge
by various means like reading,
experiencing, studying, travelling,
listening etc.
 In academics, you are provided with a
structure following which one will gain
the theoretical knowledge and
sometimes practical.
 While Academic knowledge is already
decided by high institutions,
organizations , Education is something
that is decided by the seekers of Academics
knowledge themselves. education

Functional Academics
Academics
and  While many students transition successfully into adult life, many are at risk
for experiencing difficulty during this period (Zarrett & Eccles, 2006).
Functional  Even greater difficulty has been reported for students with disabilities
Academics (Brollier, Shepard & Markley, 1994; Wagner, Newman, Cameto, Levine, &
Garza, 2007).
 Therefore, students with disabilities, and particularly students identified as
having an intellectual disability, should be provided functional academic
instruction within the educational environment with the premise of
teaching skills necessary for successful transitions into adulthood.
Functional
 Functional skills, according to Cronin (1996), are the tasks that help
Academics individuals become successful and independent adults.
 Bouck and Joshi (2012) defined functional academics as an approach to
teach “students the skills to help them be productive members of society
and support post school outcomes” (p. 140).
 Functional academics may include “core subject content, vocational
education, community access, daily living, personal finance, independent
living, transportation, social skills and relationships, and
selfdetermination” (Bouck & Joshi, 2012, p. 140).
Functional Pre Requisite Concepts
Academics 3 R s
 Reading
 Writing
 Arithmetic
Science
Social Science
Pre- requisite  These skills lay the foundation for academic subjects.

Skills  Basic skills & general knowledge concepts are broken down into steps that
are more easily managed by the child with special needs.
 Pre-Requisite concepts include very basic skills needed to be able to move
into the other academic sub-components.
 Eg.
 Matching colours/ pictures /shapes
 Sequence colours/shape/ object to follow a given pattern
 Point to requested colour/ shape /object.
 Name basic colors, shapes etc. as requested
 Sort by attribute
 Make comparisons
Pre- reading  Looking at objects in front of the
learner
Skills
 Tracking an object.
 Matches object to object
 Matches object to a picture.
 Matches picture to picture.
 Pointing to a named object, picking it
from a group of other objects
 Naming people and objects.
 Listens to instruction – direct or in a
group
 Listens to songs and stories.
 Using words to express self.
3Rs -
Reading
 Reading is the ability to decode written symbols and signs, understand the
meaning of words and coordinating these skills together in order to read
fluently.
 Reading is a complex, interactive process that continues to be a primary
means of acquiring and using information.
 Society regards reading as essential to daily living. Because reading is
fundamental to the mastery of other school subjects, students at all levels
must learn to understand what they read. They must know and use various
strategies—ways of unlocking the meaning of words and larger blocks of
text—to become successful readers.
Components of
reading Phonological
Fluency
Awareness

Decoding Comprehension
Phonological • The ability to listen inside a word – Fitzpatrick
Awareness • Phonological Awareness refers to an understanding
of the sound structure of language—that is, that
language is made up of words, syllables, rhymes, and
sounds (phonemes).
• This knowledge occurs initially in oral language;
students do not have to know how to name letters or
their corresponding sounds in order to demonstrate
phonological awareness.
 Expected Phonological Awareness Skills
Development of
PA Given sufficient instruction, practice, and exposure to
many literacy activities, students should be able to
 Word level:
 recognize how many words are in a sentence
 Syllable level:
 segment and blend words of at least three syllables
 Rhyme level:
 understand the concept of rhyming
 recognize and generate rhyming words
 Sound level:
 isolate the beginning or ending sounds in words
 segment and blend sounds in a word
 change a sound in a word to make a new word in
familiar games and songs
Phonological
Awareness  Listening and discriminating between similar and different
sounds
 Rhyming
 Alliteration
 Sentence segmentation
 Word Syllabication
 Onset and rime
 Phonemic Awareness
Listening

It includes
 Attention
 Localizing, recognizing and discriminating different
sounds.
 Reproduce a sequence of sounds (auditory memory)
 Listen actively, attentively and analytically
Rhyming

 Auditory discrimination
 Same and Different
 Recognise a rhyme,
 Predict another word that rhymes,
 Generates other words that rhymes using
contextual cues
Alliteration Auditory discrimination
Same and Different
Sentence
segmentation  Splitting sentences into individual
& Word words
 Sentences are made of a string of
Syllabication words.
 The teacher will need to model one
clap per word to help students
distinguish clapping for each word as
opposed to tapping for each syllable.

 Splitting words into syllables

Onset and Rime

 It refers to word families.

 Onset – beginning of the
word
 Rime – the latter part of
the word.
 Str-eam
Onset rime
Phonemic
Awareness  Words/syllable is
made up of sounds
/h/-/a/-/t/
(segmenting)
 Blending
 Omission
 Adding (synthesis)
 Manipulation

Pure Sound and SCHWA