Literacy has been a national educational priority for decades. Currently, legislation like the Virginia Literacy Act is focusing attention on evidence-based literacy assessment, intervention, and the research or science of reading. The goal is to improve literacy outcomes for all students. This should include students with extensive support needs. Afterall, literacy is essential to their ability to establish autonomy, control their interdependence on others, and communicate what they want, when they want, with whomever they want. Unfortunately, many students with extensive support needs are provided with few opportunities to learn to read and write and limited access to technologies that could support their interaction, engagement, and learning. When assistive technologies are provided, they are often used in ways that make it more challenging for students with extensive support needs to learn to read and write.

Beginning with an emphasis on emergent literacy in the morning, this two-part session will describe the ways current models of reading do and do not apply to students with extensive support needs. In the morning, models of emergent literacy and specific evidence-based emergent literacy instructional strategies will be described. Each will be related specifically to students with extensive support needs. Examples will also be provided of ways that assistive technology can help students develop emergent literacy understandings such as alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, receptive and expressive language, and print knowledge.