You Mean There Is A Better Way?

I apologize for taking so long to post. Between homeschooling Rylee and completing my own coursework, it is not always easy to find the time.  I am going to do my best to walk through the steps I took to provide Rylee with the opportunities that have led to her success.  As you read from my last blog post, I started homeschooling Rylee in August 2012.  It was January 1, 2013 that marked the first day I began modeling her PODD book without any expectations on her to use it.  There will be more PODD specific posts in the future, but for now I think it is best to follow the timeline of events that unfolded.  In July, 2013 she accessed the PODD for the first time using my finger.  That is a quick review of how the ball started rolling.  I want to rewind that timeline just a bit to incorporate another critical piece to the puzzle.  

In the previous post, I talked about my goals for Rylee to fully express herself as well as to teach her to read and write.  At this point in time all of my energy was invested into implementing PODD, so I had very little left over to also figure out how to teach her to read and write.  Keep in mind that I did all of this on my own without any therapists or training.  I knew there had to be a way to teach Rylee how to become literate, but I only had special education training that focused on behavioral approaches.  I began to follow the Penn State Literacy website by Janice Light and David McNaughton.  Through this I explicitly taught Rylee each lowercase letter sound through a modified version of Discrete Trial Training.  We focused on one new letter each week from August 2012 to May 2013.

Okay…. pay attention because here is that critical piece to the puzzle I told you about.  In April of 2013 I saw an e-mail on the Angelman listserve from Erin Sheldon about the Bridge Protocol, which is an emergent literacy skills assessment.  She let me fill it out and send it back to her for feedback.  I will never forget that private e-mail thread as it changed the course of Rylee's literacy instruction forever!  Erin so graciously and diplomatically pointed out the error of my ways.  I was dumbfounded that this whole other perspective to literacy instruction was out there that made so much sense.  It aligned perfectly with the theory behind PODD which I had already been doing.  This was the course of action that I knew I needed to pursue, but this would mean a whole lot of research again.  

So that is what I did.  I knew I had been going about her literacy instruction all wrong.  It was wrong because it was limiting to what I wanted her to learn.  It lacked any opportunity for being intrinsically motivating, and most importantly it made her prove herself time and time again.  Making Rylee prove herself was the primary fault of those early instructional practices that we used such as PECS and Discrete Trial Training.  When I switched to PODD I had to switch mentalities of not making Rylee prove herself. Instead, I had to presume her competence.  Additionally, by me modeling PODD and using DTT for literacy, they really clashed with one another because the theories behind them were polar opposites.  

Here was Erin, my beacon of light shining so bright pointing me in the right direction.  I knew without a doubt in my mind this was the missing puzzle piece.  I will forever be indebted to her for opening our world. Little did I know it was going to lead to such incredible achievements.  She introduced me to the "Greats" as I call them.  You can find some of them too by researching Caroline Musselwhite, Gretchen Hanser, David Koppenhaver, Chris Kliewer, and Karen Erickson.  Those names will lead you into a world of literacy you never knew existed.  The Center for Literacy and Disability Studies is a great resource that holds a wealth of information.  The Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four Blocks Way book is another great starting point.  

That is what I spent the summer doing…. reading, researching, and trying to wrap my head around how in the world I was going to make this happen for Rylee.  It was August of 2013 when I kicked it all into gear.  It all happened so fast.  The month prior she first accessed the PODD and then the next month we moved on to literacy.  I do not believe things would have progressed so fast with the literacy achievements if she did not first have the PODD.  The PODD played an important role because she was able to demonstrate her knowledge base.

Now you have some background to help you understand that this is not something that happened overnight. It took a lot of research on my part (and a lot of questions for Erin).  Stay tuned for my next blog post that will kick off with the actual steps I took to structure a balanced literacy program.  This post might seem tedious but I think it is very important to understand the chain of events leading up to her accomplishments.