Creating Confident Readers and Writers in the Special Education Classroom

Abstract

Given the unilateral push towards deploying the Science of Reading in the K-12 classroom, understanding the benefits of programs like Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) can help educators make decisions about how they can best support all types of learners. This reflective essay reports on interventions used with two high school seniors receiving special education services. It explains how LETRS principles were applied in the classroom to address decoding, morphology, vocabulary, comprehension, and composition deficits. It documents instructional adjustments, challenges, successes, and future instructional plans, and argues for the value of structured literacy and morphology-focused vocabulary study in the secondary special education classroom.