Shattering Glass Ceilings in Literacy

Individuals with Down syndrome CAN do research!

There are three levels to our 1:1 Literacy Tutoring program. The first one starts off at a very basic level: attending to a story from start to finish, turning pages, pointing to characters and objects in the pictures etc. Level two pushes a little harder diving into “Who, What, Where, When, Why, How” questions. Level three takes those same questions and prompts the student to dive further into text to find more information. We take for granted that our students make it to level three because we’ve always believed they could. We don’t see their diagnosis and think “No way can they do a research project. That’s too involved and complex for them.” But, other people do. That’s one of the reasons why we need to shout their accomplishments from the rooftops and let everyone know YES THEY CAN!

Gabby does research on the iPad

Gabby and Aaron learn about Dolphins

This dynamic duo have been working on this research project for several weeks this summer. Gabby used many platforms to gather and organize her information like a poster board, colorful paper and markers, and the iPad. Aaron, her tutor was briefly interviewed on the project for more information.

Interview:

Question : When first deciding to do the project, and Gabby told you about Dolphins, what was your next step?

Answer : My goal was to make this project both fun and educational. I wanted to gauge Gabby’s aptitude for using the iPad to perform research. I prepared the above materials to position the project to be equal parts research as well as an art project. Gabby would walk away with something tangible to show for her hard work.

Question : Did you find a book about Dolphins or did you ask Gabby to find one and bring it?  Answer : We did not leverage any printed material. We used the in-house provided iPads.

Question : When reading info about dolphins, how did Gabby find the relevant info for the project?

Answer : We first did a google search on ‘Dolphins’ we looked at different google images and talked about the different species of Dolphins, different sizes, colors, and types. Wikipedia was our primary source of information.

Question : Did she need prompting?

Answer : Yes, Gabby needed prompting as well as a number of times stopping to ask for help. It is always encouraging working with Gabby and still pushing her to “try” it on her own, in most cases she ends up with the correct answer. With this exercise I noticed Gabby leveraged the iPad functionality of predictive text to help her solve the problem rather then letting me intervene.

Question : What new information did she learn about dolphins?

Answer : This question should be asked as, what information did “we” learn. All information on the final project was new information to us both. I think we provided fun facts about Dolphins that might be new information to most.

Question : Where did she struggle?

Answer : Our biggest roadblock is spelling. With the help of technology (both spell check and predictive text) this doesn’t pose too much of an issue, at the end of the day it comes down to confidence, which is something I can see improving with time and practice.

Aaron and Gabby

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