Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities have generally been taught literacy using a curriculum focusing on functional life skills (Katims, 2000). Through functional skills curricula, students are frequently taught to recognize and write a limited number of the sight words to support their participation in the community or at work (Mosley, Flynt, & Morton, 1997). For example, a student might be taught to recognize the words danger and exit for safety purposes and the days of the week to read a work schedule. Although learning such words would be beneficial, a functional skills approach to literacy instruction does not equip students with the skills needed to identify words beyond the specific sight words they have been taught. This inhibits their abilities to read and write for other purposes, and therefore, limits their opportunities to take part more fully in their communities (Copeland & Keefe, 2007). Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities may not be afforded other types of literacy instruction because it is often believed that they are incapable of learning other, more sophisticated aspects of literacy (Kluth & Chandler-Olcott, 2008).

According to Joseph and Seery (2004), “The potential for individuals with [intellectual disabilities] to grasp and generalize literacy skills has been underestimated by many educators and researchers” (p. 93). Although research is still limited in the area of higher-level literacy instruction (i.e., literacy instruction that extends beyond a functional skills approach) for students with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities, a number of studies have shown that students with such disabilities have learned to decode words, comprehend narrative and expository texts, and write for expression (e.g., Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Jones, & Champlin, 2010; Conners, Rosenquist, Sligh, Atwell, & Kiser, 2006; Pennington, Stenhoff, Gibson, & Ballou, 2012).

Up until quite recently, it has been difficult to determine what constitutes good evidence-based literacy instruction for students with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities (Lemons, Mrachko, Kostewicz, & Paterra, 2012). This difficulty is largely because much of the research done on best reading practices has not included this population of students. Further, conventional wisdom once suggested that students with intellectual and developmental disabilities might need qualitatively different instruction than their peers without disability labels. It makes sense though, that on some level, the same type of high-quality instruction that works with other struggling students should be beneficial to any student, despite disability label. Researchers have recently begun to test this premise, and the results are promising. In this chapter, you will learn more about literacy instruction for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and how to devise lessons to meet their individual needs in reading.