Ask the Expert
Expert: Cherie Takemoto

During the month of April, Cherie Takemoto answered your questions about helping readers with special needs.

Read her response to question 2 below.

Question 2:
Hello, I am a parent of third grader who struggles with reading. She loves art and science but isn't as motivated to read. Do you have any ideas on how I might use her strengths in art and science to help her in reading?

Response from Cherie Takemoto:
One pitfall in teaching a child with reading difficulties to read is to limit reading opportunities to areas that are giving the child trouble. By nurturing a love of reading in your daughter by nurturing her love of art and science, you might find that she is the one asking you for more to read.

I would welcome you to sign on to a tool that my organization, PEATC, has developed with George Mason University's Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities and their Instructional Design Masters Program.

LiteracyAccess Online (LAO) is an internet-based instructional tool that supports parents, teachers, volunteers, teaching assistants and others to teach literacy skills to children having reading difficulties in grades 4 through 8, but older and younger children have used it also. Students and parents have contributed to the design through pilots both on site and online.

Literacy skills are needed and can be used in language arts, science, social studies, math, the general curriculum, indeed in every part of life in and out of school. LAO improves opportunities for learning to read by teaching parents, teachers, volunteers, paraprofessionals and others reach and teach students who want to learn to read, but who also have experienced frustration and failure at not keeping up with their peers in reading. You and your daughter might enjoy going to the Story Builder which allows users to create their own stories by locating interesting content available on the web and adapting to the interest and ability of the reader. If your daughter also would like to have a text reader to read content from the web, you can get a free copy of a text-reader, browsealoud, that can read content pulled into our site, since it is , browsealoud -enabled.

This LiteracyAccess Online (LAO) program is free and located at http://www.literacyaccessonline.com, hosted by George Mason University.

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