Strategy 6: Provide opportunities for students to read for the purpose of experiencing new feelings and attitudes

Choose reading materials that elicit new feelings and/or explore a variety of attitudes.
Adapt materials into accessible formats needed for instruction.
- Adapting materials for readers who are blind, visually impaired, physically impaired, or intellectually disabled can provide them access to the richness of literature and the independence of reading for information.
- Include enlarged pictures, picture symbols, tactile symbols, objects/partial objects with which students can interact during the actual reading of the material.
- Reduce the amount of text on each page and enlarge the font size to 20-30 point. Use fonts with no serifs for clearest text.
Create meaningful symbols/pictures related to abstract concepts (e.g., loneliness, death).
- Making tactile symbols of abstract concepts can be very difficult. The Texas School for the Blind developed a system for creating consistent symbols that may be used to represent abstract concepts for students who can understand abstract representations.
Present text in a variety of formats and multiple times to connect meaning to the concept.
Discuss feelings/attitudes appearing in text and relate to real-life experiences.
Create "feeling" word banks and keep accessible to student.
Refer back to symbols frequently to reinforce/maintain concepts.

Have you thought about pre-teaching the lesson if you are working in an inclusive setting?
Are all of your teaching materials age appropriate for the students you are working with?
Have you provided materials that include both independent and instructional reading levels?
Can you build in repetition of stories and concepts?
Have you modified your materials to minimize visual clutter?
Are you watching the student's positioning, keeping in mind the child may have physical or visual fatigue?
Are you doing follow-up activities that expand or use the same targeted vocabulary as your story?
Do students have a way to communicate expressively if they are non-verbal?