Teaching early reading skills to children with severe intellectual disabilities using Headsprout Early Reading

Beginning reading skills are often taught using phonics. Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of phonics with typically developing students, but less research has evaluated this method with students with intellectual disabilities.

This paper evaluated the computerized phonics-based intervention Headsprout Early Reading^® with eight students aged 7-19 years with severe intellectual disability. Six children were verbal, two were non-verbal. Four students completed Headsprout as it was designed for typically developing children, and four students accessed two adapted version of the intervention. Additional table-top teaching was used to support the intervention for some participants.

Verbal students improved in initial sound fluency, nonsense word reading, and word recognition, but did not show improvements in phonemic segmentation, regardless of whether or not they accessed the original or adapted intervention.

The findings suggest that Headsprout Early Reading can be used to support the development of reading skills for students with intellectual disability.