By, Rebekah Greer

Manasota BUDS recently hosted a workshop with guest speaker Natalie Hale, founder of Special Reads for Special Needs. Manasota BUDS is a volunteer organization based in Bradenton, Florida, that provides networking and support for families and helps promote understanding and acceptance of Down Syndrome. Natalie was an excellent speaker, with so much information to share. Her program Special Reads for Special Needs provides specialized reading materials for learners with Down Syndrome, Autism, and other developmental delays, and Natalie has so many wonderful suggestions for making reading more fun and effective. One of her recommendations for helping children learn to read is making personal books. So, how do we do this?

Materials you will need:

A “hot topic” list of at least 9 of your child’s favorite people, family members, pets foods, toys, activities, sports, characters, etc.

5×8 index cards

1 10# card stock paper (for printing the book)

Red marker (for making flash cards)

Instructions

Choose a vocabulary list of 10-15 words. Some of these will be your “hot topic” words, and some will be Dolch Sight words, appropriate to your child’s reading level. A full list of Dolch words can be found here: http://www.dolchword.net/printables/All220DolchWordsByGradeAlpha.pdf

Write the text for your book. Keep your sentences short and simple, each one will be on a page by itself. After each sentence page, the next page will be the sentence plus a picture. Be sure to end your story with “The End.” I created a book about the Minions from Despicable Me. I kept it very simple and incorporated numerical words one to ten. The entire book had 11 vocabulary words.

Create flash cards for all of the words in your story. You can do this by writing them as large as possible using your red marker, or printing them on your computer in red ink (red has been known to help children learn).

Find photos online, cut our pictures from magazines, or take your own photos to go along with your text.

Write the text on your computer and print it, with these guidelines (directly from Natalie Hale’s website):

Use landscape mode

Set font to size 70-100 black, and choose one of the Sans Serif fonts (Arial, Calibri, Tahoma). Almost everything we read on a daily basis (newspapers, internet, books) is in a Sans Serif font.

Type one sentence per page, alternating sentence only and sentence with picture and print using the 1 10# index paper stock (or use plain paper in a pinch, and laminate to help your book hold up longer).

Assemble your book with the text ONLY on the right hand side. You can take your book to an office supply store for binding.

Time to read!

Using Fast Flash, a method of reviewing flashcards at a rapid pace, which helps maintain a child’s attention and helps with instant recall, review the vocabulary with your child. You can find more detail about the Fast Flash method here: http://specialreads.com/blog/?p=165. Once you have reviewed the flashcards, it’s time to read the book to your child and enjoy it together! Finish up by showing/calling out the flash cards again, and you’re done!

You can continue to create new books with the same topic and new sight words, or create books with new topics. In addition to the Minions book, I also created a book about a baby doll, to help teach some verb vocabulary (Baby Eats, Baby Sleeps, Baby Drinks, Etc.).

Once we read the book and review the vocabulary, we get to play with the baby!

I hope you enjoy making your own personalized books!