Date of Award
7-1987
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Education
Department
Education
First Advisor
Diane Denney
Second Advisor
Gene Henderson
Abstract
In Missouri, the State School System serves the majority of severely handicapped students aged five to twenty-one and strives to facilitate their integration into community environments. The State Schools' most recent curriculum was developed in 1975. This guide cannot adequately prepare handicapped students for survival in a least restrictive environment because much of the guide's content is nonfunctional and taught in objectives simulated (classroom) settings . Its are not stated behaviorally, nor do they provide criterion levels new type of curriculum for is evaluation; needed. A clearly, a functional reading curriculum would equip the severely handicapped student with some degree of functional literacy: information activities reading to complete domestic tasks, to gain about community and recreational and to locate and maintain employment. This reading reading skills curriculum would teach functional in natural environments: domestic, community, leisure and vocational. These natural settings would serve both as a location for training and as a source of curricular content. The functional reading skills in each environment would be incorporated in short term objectives, trained in one or more enabling activities and evaluated according to clearly stated criterion. One systematic manner of generating the vocabulary necessary for the handicapped student's integration into natural environments is the ecological inventory strategy proposed by several researchers. In this process, essential reading information important to a particular student and his natural environments is identified . An ecological inventory determines the I actual reading vocabulary needed by an individual to independently perform an activity in a particular environment.
If severely handicapped students are to achieve the State School System's goals of normalization and integration into society's mainstream, they must be equipped with some degree of functional literacy. Researchers have suggested that such literacy might include reading to complete tasks, to gain information, for leisure and to locate and maintain a job . The achievement of these functional skills would enable severely handicapped individuals to successfully access domestic, community, leisure and vocational settings.
Recommended Citation
Sassenrath, Marie, "A Functional Reading Curriculum for Severely Handicapped Students" (1987). Theses. 1315.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/theses/1315
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