teaching a non-verbal child to 'read'

[MommyUpNorth]

Has anyone done it, and if so, how did you go about it? DS is going to start P1 (Scotland) in August, and the teacher has offered us the 1st 6 ORT (Biff, Kipper, etc...) books to have a look at over the summer. I've offered to adapt stories if necessary & make games (matching pictures) for ds to use with each book.

Obviously by the title, ds is non-verbal... but the class will do their phonics & then sight words & ds will join in in his own way. How do other kids start down the path to reading?

I should also mention that ds has SLD as well, so I was going to do very simple picture books, with simple text underneath like DS is eating, DS is at the park... that sort of thing. He would then have to sign the story to us.

At the minute he signs along to familiar books and picks out things on the pages which interest him, but how do you reverse the process so that he would sort of initiate the 'reading' back to us?

There is probably some really obvious process here that I'm totally missing! SLT doesn't really know what to do, and his IEP target for the last year or so has been to produce the m, p & b sounds... but we're not there yet at all, so speech is a loooooong way off!

jimjams is that the Reading Kingdom program? If so, perhaps we'll do the free trial over the summer and see if ds clicks with it. Really trying not to buy into a whole system only to find that he won't participate! (done it too many times before!)

ouryve that was one of the first things one of our SLTs suggested (the labelling around the house)... ds also shredded (or ate!) the sticky notes... and the laminated ones just got moved around by him to wherever he fancied so it didn't have a whole lot of educational value! :)

Also interested in the consonant recognition as ds is also ASD... unfortunately none of our professionals can really pick out if he isn't learning something because of the ASD or the learning disability... so it's how I spend my free time. :o

Following with interest as ds1 can spell words very well on the Ipad/Iphone apps (though realise is pattern matching as well as sound matching) but so far we have no clear way forward to actual reading but would like to make it a summer project. I feel encouraged just by reading all the ideas on this thread so will be printing it !

DD2 (nearly 7) is also non-verbal but (due to motor issues) unable to sign etc. She is doing the ORT scheme too. Her teacher has decided that phonics are not the way to go and DD2 is learning whole words only. We are doing lots with flashcards for homework. For example, the teacher suggested that we read the page together ("Kipper did that") and then ask DD2 "who did that?" - the task being to identify the "Kipper" flash card correctly (usually by eye pointing). Its a slooow process, but she is now able to build up a sentence of 6 words. Lots of repetition and reinforcement but she is getting there.

Mommy - it's similar to the Reading Kingdom (which I really like btw - it completely sorted out NT ds3's problems - as it got him looking from left to right), but it's adapted for children being non-verbal, so works on language and understand as well. I'm fairly sure the Reading Kingdom used more language than ds1 would have been able to cope with.

Thank you everyone! This has given me plenty of ideas to try over the summer and hopefully we'll find something that will send us down the right path.

I've also sent an email to Dr. Blank, so hopefully someone there will reply about the program which might be most suitable for ds.

She's definitely your woman for non-verbal + reading...

I am still trying to get through to my dd school a year on that there must be ways of her to read without speaking.
There attitude is that "she can't talk so she can't read"
I was utterly disgusted at this attitude, yes the school seem to think that's right.

I have just brought an iPad and the makaton symbol app, my choice. Am hoping to use this as a tool for her to learn symbols so she can the start to learn to read