Life Success
For Students With Learning Disabilities:
A Teacher Guide
Children’s Literature
Two book lists are provided in this resource section. The first list includes fictional books whose main characters have learning problems. These books have been selected by the Frostig research team as accurately depicting learning difficulties and illustrating one or more success attribute within the context of a child struggling with a learning difficulty. The attributes represented in the story appear below the description of each book. The list is not inclusive, and teachers are encouraged to also select their own books.
The second list of books has been selected by a distinguished panel of children’s authors, librarians, and children’s book reviewers. Each book is believed to represent exemplary children’s literature and to illustrate one or more success attributes within the story. This list of books does not include characters with learning problems.
Ways to Use Books to Foster the Success Attributes
Literature can be used to help children gain self-awareness and solve problems. The use of books with this purpose in mind is called bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy has been suggested as a way to help students with learning disabilities (a) develop problem-solving strategies, (b) know that there are other people with problems similar to theirs, (c) develop insights into their feelings and behaviors, and (d) enhance self-concept.
Additional books chosen for this purpose should be well written and have literary merit (Aiex, 1993). Poorly written material will do little to foster interest, provoke thought, or encourage introspection. Teachers will need to determine whether individual or group sessions are the most appropriate for their particular situation.
Tu (1999) suggests that literature used to help children cope with problems include the following features:
- Be well written and age appropriate
- Provide language that is familiar to students and is realistic in terms of their life experiences
- Honestly portray the situation and future possibilities for the characters
- Present multidimensional characters experiencing legitimate and relatable emotions
- Offer potential for controversy
- Explore the process of working out problems
- Demonstrate clear channels of communication and responses to children’s questions
- Offer situations that generate enthusiasm in the reader
Aiex (1993) offers several guidelines including (a) motivate students with introductory activities; (b) provide time for reading the material; (c) allow “incubation” time; (d) providing follow-up discussion time that will lead students to interpret, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the information; and (e) conduct teacher evaluations and student self-evaluations.
Forgan (2002) has made several suggestions for how to teach problem solving through literature to students with disabilities, including learning disabilities. He recommends the following sequence of activities:
- Prereading - a) selection of material and (b) activating students’ background knowledge and helping them link their experiences with the book
- Guide reading - teacher reads the story out loud and lets students reflect by writing their reaction in a literature journal
- Postreading discussion - students retell story and are asked probing questions to ensure they understand the story
- Problem solving - students develop independent problem-solving strategies
Hildreth and Candler (1992) proposed a series of questions consideredto be effective for using reading materials to help students with learning disabilities better understand themselves and their problems. This list of questions has been adapted specifically for probing the success attributes:
- What was the story about?
- Who were the main characters?
- Can you describe them?
- Did any of the characters demonstrate any of the success attributes at the beginning of the story?
- Did any of the characters develop the success attributes as the story progressed?
- What specific attributes did they have?
- Did some characters have these attributes more that other characters?
- Why do you think this was the case?
- What specific attributes did they learn about?
- How were these attributes developed?
- What circumstances led to the development of these attributes?
- Did the characters get help from anyone in learning these attributes?
- How did the attributes help them?
- Do you think the characters could have solved their problems/been successful without the success attributes?
- Do you think they will use these attributes in other situations? Why or why not?
- How do you think you would have solved the problem?
- Do you think you have the success attributes that helped the character(s) solve their problem/reach their goal, or achieve success?
Next: Book List - Characters with Learning Problems
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