Professional paper
An intervention program related to reading development – a case study of a child with Williams syndrome
Anastasia Alevriadou
; University of Western Macedonia, Department of Early Childhood Education, Greece
Elena Griva
; University of Western Macedonia, Department of Early Childhood Education, Greece
Maria Massi
; University of Western Macedonia, Department of Early Childhood Education, Greece
Abstract
The present paper is related to a case study of an 8-year-old girl with Williams syndrome and mild intellectual disability. Initial informal assessments and standardized tests indicated that her reading ability was underdeveloped, as well as her phonological awareness. Hence, an intervention for the development of reading skills was designed according to the principles of the ‘top-down’ educational model, combining features from several teaching methods, such as ‘holistic approach’, ‘holisticanalytical method’, and ‘whole-word teaching’. The student’s progress was recorded in the researcher’s journal and evaluated through informal continuous assessment and standardized test. She managed to read 45 out of 65 words, which were included in
the intervention, simple syllables with the consonant-vowel sequence and some simple two-syllable words without any complex content, not included in the intervention. The intervention proved to be effective, as the student indicated development in her reading skills, although to a certain degree. Finally, the results verified the influence of the phonological factor in reading and highlighted the holist approach as an appropriate way to develop reading and comprehension skills.
Keywords
Williams syndrome; reading ability; educational reading program; intervention; language skills
Hrčak ID:
110038
URI
Publication date:
4.11.2013.
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