Abstract
The authors collaborated and shared equal responsibility in all aspects of the development of this project that reviews current research and outlines an integrated approach to teaching nonverbal students to read. As the number of nonverbal students entering public schools is steadily increasing, the need for effective tools to teach these students becomes more pressing. The primary purpose of this project is to provide teachers and reading instructors with an alternate reading instruction framework for instructing nonverbal students to read. The method of instruction being proposed for this project aims to use the principles for best practice in reading instruction as proposed by the National Reading Panel (NRP) with a combined visual-nonverbal reading approach to specifically address the learning needs of nonverbal students. The prepared project is a 6-hour Power Point training workshop for teachers on two main approaches to teaching reading to nonverbal students, and how these approaches can be combined to maximize student success. The workshop presentation includes detailed facilitator notes for each slide with information that should be shared with the participants, and instructions for activities. The method of instruction presented in the training workshop is developed into a ten lesson teacher’s guide. The ten lesson guide specifies how to implement a combined visual-nonverbal approach to teach letter sound correspondence, sound blending and high-frequency sight words to nonverbal students. The training presentation is designed so that it can be delivered by any reading specialist, educational specialist or school psychologist. It is expected that participants of the workshop will gain a greater understanding of how a combined visual nonverbal approach to reading instruction can be used to teach early literacy skills to nonverbal students.