The document provides an overview of the Four Blocks literacy approach for teaching students with diverse needs. It discusses emergent literacy, balanced literacy instruction, and the four blocks: guided reading, self-selected reading, writing, and working with words. The four blocks framework is designed to provide structured, multisensory literacy instruction adapted for each student's needs and skills.

1. Introduction to the Four Blocks
Approach to Literacy in Special
Needs Classrooms

2. “No student is too
anything to be
able to read and
write”
David Yoder, DJI-AbleNet
Literacy Lecture, ISAAC
2000

3. Accommodating Struggles
physical demands
cognitive demands
sensory demands
communication demands
experience demands
affect demands

4. So how do we teach literacy for all our
diverse students?

5. Emergent Literacy

6. Traditional view of Literacy
• Emphasises “readiness”;
• Literacy is learned in a predetermined
sequential manner that is linear, additive, and
unitary;
• Literacy learning is school-based;
• Literacy learning requires mastery of certain
prerequisite skills;
• Some children will never learn to read.

7. Traditional Model of Literacy Learning
(Erickson, 1999)
Readiness
Skills
Speaking
Listening

8. Current/Emergent View of Literacy
• Literacy development is constructive, interactive,
recursive, and emergent;
• Literacy development is a process that begins
at birth and perhaps before;
• Emergent literacy is “…the reading and writing
behaviours that precede and develop into
conventional literacy”;
• Emergent literacy is appropriate for all
children.

9. Oral and Written Language
Development
(Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman & Yoder, 1991. Adapted from Teale and Sulzby, 1989)
AAC/
Speaking
Reading Literacy Writing
Listening

10. Emergent Literacy
• Emergent literacy behaviours are fleeting and
variable depending on text, task and
environment;
• The functions of print are as integral to literacy
as the forms.

11. Emergent Literacy Intervention
• Happens in the pre-school years for most
children;
• Incidental learning and teaching about letters,
words, literacy concepts;
• Children with phonological awareness at the
beginning of school may not have had good
emergent literacy input.

12. Emergent Literacy and Children with
Disabilities
• Light et al (1994), Frame (2000);
• Passive interaction pattern;
• Larger number of new books;
• Fewer repeated readings;
• Less time spent on literacy activities.

13. Emergent Literacy Intervention
• Some school aged children need emergent
literacy experiences before they can develop
conventional literacy;
• Lots of simple books being read to them;
• Chances to scribble with the alphabet;
• Good literacy environment and models;
• Need to make sure student gets exposed to
reading AND writing AND word intervention.

14. Emergent Literacy
• Give every student a “pencil”!
• Provide a literacy rich environment;
• Ensure links between environment and print are
constantly reinforced;
• Alphabet books;
• Phonological awareness activities, particularly
for students with Complex Communication
Needs (CCN).

15. Emergent Literacy
“Written language activities and
experiences should not be withheld
while speech, language, motor or
other skill(s) develop to arbitrary,
prerequisite levels.”
Koppenhaver and Erickson (2000)

16. Conventional Literacy

17. Silent Reading Comprehension
Word Language
Identification Comprehension
Print Processing
Beyond Word Identification
(Slide from Erickson and Koppenhaver, 2010)

18. Beginning To Read
Phonological awareness, letter recognition facility,
familiarity with spelling patterns, spelling-sound
relations, and individual words must be
developed in concert with read reading and
real writing and with deliberate reflection on
the forms, functions, and meanings of texts.
(Adams, 1990)

19. Literacy Instruction
Phonics
Balanced
Literacy
Instruction
Whole
Language

20. Balanced Literacy Instruction
• Uses all valid parts of literacy instruction – not
one approach;
• Works for students all along the literacy
continuum – from emergent to formal;
• Four Blocks is balanced literacy instruction.

21. Four Blocks

22. Four Blocks
• Created by Patricia Cunningham and Dorothy
Hall;
• www.fourblocks.com;
• Four Blocks in Special Ed wiki
https://fourblock.wikispaces.com/.

23. Four Blocks
• Centre for Literacy and Disability Studies,
North Carolina
http://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds;
• Big thank-you to them for teaching me about
Four Blocks, sharing their resources and being
awesome!
• Have a good look at their resources section.

24. If All Children Are To
Learn, All Teachers
Must Teach Everything
(Koppenhaver, Erickson & Clendon, 2008)

25. Technology To Support the Four Blocks

26. But remember.....
ICT = It Can’t Teach

27. Guided Reading

28. Guided Reading
• Primary purposes are to assist students to:
– Understand that reading involves thinking and
meaning-making;
– Become more strategic in their own reading.
• Must use a wide variety of books and other
print materials.
• NOT listening comprehension.

29. Purposes for Reading
• Need to set a purpose every time you do
guided reading;
• If you don’t set a purpose students think they
have to remember everything – or become
passive;
• Purpose needs to be broad enough to motivate
processing of entire text.

30. Guided Reading
• 1 book per week;
• Different purpose each day;
• Build confidence;
• Some students will participate in the repeated
readings or in setting purposes as they become
more skilled;
• Help students become independent.

31. 5 part Guided Reading
• Before reading:
1. Build or activate background knowledge
2. Purpose “Read so that you can”
• During reading:
3. Read/listen
• After reading:
4. Task directly related to the purpose
5. Feedback/Discussion (typically woven into follow-up)
• What makes you say that? How do you know? Why do you think so?
• Help students gain cognitive clarity so they can be successful again
or next time

32. Cock-A-Moo-Moo
1. Read to learn which animal in the book is your
favourite (before reading, list the animals in
the book)

34. #1 - Read to learn which animal in the
book is your favourite

35. Participation for students with CCN
• If they have a comprehensive communication
system (eg PODD) then they can use that to
participate across the day;
• If they don’t then we need to provide ways for
them to participate;
• AND we need to work towards getting them a
comprehensive communication system.

36. Cock-A-Moo-Moo Purposes
1. Read to learn which animal in the book is your
favourite (before reading, list the animals in the book)
2. Read to see what is the funniest sound the rooster
makes (before reading, list the sounds the rooster
makes)
3. Read to decide which feelings the rooster has (before
reading, list some feelings you know)
4. Read to discuss why the fox was sneaking in (before
reading discuss reasons he might sneak into a barn)
5. Read to see which farm animals aren’t in the book
(before reading list the farm animals you know)

37. #2 - Read to see what is the funniest
sound the rooster makes

38. #3 - Read to decide which feelings the
rooster has

39. #4 - Read to discuss why the fox was
sneaking in

40. #5 - Read to see which farm animals
aren’t in the book

41. Repetition with Variety
To learn a skill and generalise it across contexts,
instruction must provide repetition of the skills in
a variety of ways

42. Variety
• Variety of purposes;
• Variety of approaches;
• Variety of texts;

43. Red light, Green light

44. Variety of texts
• Commercial books;
• Fiction and non-fiction;
• Language Experience/custom texts;
• Created texts about class/individual
experiences;
• Personal alphabet books;
• TarHeel Reader books.

45. What does Emma do?
by Mr Clark

46. Guided Reading Books
• Those you already have (class and library);
• Information from the www;
• Created books on topics of interest in
PowerPoint, Clicker 5, Boardmaker Studio;
• TarHeel Reader;
• Start-to-Finish books.
• Guided Reading packs at
http://www.janefarrall.com/html/guided.html

47. Picture, Symbols and Text
• Symbols appear to improve access to
literacy..... But do they really?

50. Why no picture-supported text when
teaching reading?
• Pictographs can be distracting for developing readers
who may pay more attention to the pictures than the
text they are learning to read/decode
• After a review of literature Hatch (2009) found “the
outcomes of several research studies that investigated
the use of pictures to support the development of word
identification in readers with and without disabilities
indicated that children learned more words in fewer
trials when words were presented alone than when
paired with pictures (Pufpaff, Blischak & Lloyd, 2000;
Samuels, 1967; Samuels et al, 1974)

51. Why are pictographs distracting?
• Symbols representing function words are typically
opaque and unrelated to the meaning of the text.
• The lack of consistency of symbols and symbol-sets
used to represent words across AAC user’s
learning environments, and;
• The multiple symbolic representations and
meanings for single written words e.g. play.

52. When should we use symbols?
• To support COMMUNICATION
– All day, every day
– During reading instruction
– During writing instruction
• To support behaviour and self-regulation
– Visual supports
– Visual schedules

53. Self-Selected Reading

54. Self-Selected Reading
• Primary purposes are to assist students to:
– Understand why they might want to learn;
– Become automatic in skill application;
– Choose to read after they learn how.
• It isn’t self-directed if you don’t choose it
yourself;
• You can’t get good at it if it is too difficult.

55. Self-Selected Reading
• How do we create in our classrooms the
conditions that lead students to a love of
reading?
• How do we provide our students with successful
practice that will make them fluent readers?

56. Self-Selected Reading
• Most receptive vocabulary growth occurs
through exposure to written language rather
than direct instruction
• Reading volume is the prime contributor to
vocabulary growth
– True for poor readers and good readers

57. Self-Selected Reading
• Help students to:
– Understand why they might want to learn to read
– Become automatic in skill application
– Choose to read after they learn how
• It isn’t self directed if you don’t chose it yourself
• You can’t get good at it if it is too difficult

58. Self-Selected Reading for Students with
Disabilities
• Need to make books accessible to ALL students
• Many children with disabilities have fewer
opportunities to practice than their peers and
when they do they are often passive
participants (Koppenhaver and Yoder, 1992)

59. Encourage Repeated Reading
• Easy texts
• Read the same passage in guided reading for
several days for a different purpose each day
• Pair older readers up with young reading
buddies to validate reading of “baby books”

60. Self-Selected Reading Resources
• Commercial books
• Custom books
• TarHeel Reader books
• Other digital storybook website e.g. Starfall,
MeeGenius
• Digital storybook apps on iPads

61. Writing

62. Writing
• Students who write become better readers,
writers and thinkers
• Writing without standards
• Learn in classroom writing communities:
– Write for real reasons
– See others do so
– Interact with peers and teachers about written
content, use and form

63. Writing
• Writing consists of a large number of sub-skills
• These include:
– Ideas, language, spelling, sensory motor skills, word
identification, word generation, etc
• Many of these skills, especially operational skills, need
to be automatic before a writer becomes fluent
• Need to address both:
– The development of skills for writing
– Meeting current requirements for writing (record school
work, demonstrate knowledge, write to friends, etc.)
From Erickson and Koppenhaver, 2000

64. Writing and Reading
• Without a pencil writing doesn’t improve
• Without writing, reading development will be
limited
• If a student doesn’t have a pencil, you need to
find one!

65. Writing and Emergent Literacy
• The function of literacy is as important as the
form
• Students need to understand why writing is
important

66. Function Versus Form

67. Emergent Writing

68. Emergent Writing
Malakye’s name

69. Emergent Writing
Malakye’s picture

70. Developmental Spelling Stages
• Print has meaning (emergent writing) – scribble,
numbers, letter-like strings, letters
• Visual Cue – read/spell in environmental context,
tuned to distinctive visual features
• Phonetic Cue – sound it out, “glue to print” (initial
sound, initial + final, initial, medial + final)
• Transitional – rule based e.g. putting past tense on
every verb
• Conventional

71. Personal Connection
The power of starting from the things children
love the most!

72. Writing Intervention
• Inherently multilevel and individualised
• Typically chaotic in classroom context
• Goals: creating skills, experiences and interest
to help children write well and use writing to
accomplish their own purposes
• Plan volume of writing versus quality of writing,
number of pieces versus length of pieces

73. Working with Words

74. Working with Words
• Primary purpose is to help students become
strategic in reading words;
• Make words instruction:
– Words based;
– Experience based;
– Age appropriate;
• Should results in students who read and write:
– More;
– More successfully and independently;
– With greater enjoyment.

75. Early Reading Instruction
• Three primary views on what to emphasise in
early word level instruction:
– Predictability
– Decoding
– Sight words
• Treated as mutually exclusive, yet are not
• Question is not which is best, but how to make
the most of each

76. Inner Voice
• People who use AAC talk about an “inner”
voice
• Typically developing children sound things “out
loud” then move to inner voice “saying in their
head”
• Essential that we teach people who use AAC to
develop their inner voice early
• Helps them to encode and recode, spell,
produce language, etc

77. Working with Words
• Needs to be done very regularly
• Skills taught are essential for reading and
writing development

78. Getting Started by Teaching the
Alphabet

79. Teaching Alphabet Knowledge
• Read alphabet books
• Point out letters and print in the environment
• Talk about letters and their sounds when you
encounter them in every day activities
• Provide opportunities to play with letter shapes
and sounds
• Explicitly reference letter names and sounds in
shared reading and writing activities
• Use mnemonics and actions
• Use student NAMES!

80. Word Wall
• Used to teach words that you don’t want
students to have to work to decode or spell
• Learning not exposure – about learning 5
words not being exposed to 20
• Need/want/use vs curriculum driven direct-
instruction

81. Word Wall

82. Onset and Rime Families
• E.g. ack, ail, ain, ake, ale, ame, an, ine
• Teach one word representing each of these
endings, then in other activities teach the
children what to do to transfer “back” to “sack,
hack”

83. Making Words
• Cunningham and Cunningham (1992);
• Scaffolded program to encourage students to
become confident about making individual
words;
• Teaches students to look for spelling patterns in
words and recognise the differences that result
when a single letter is changed.

84. Willans Hill Four Blocks
• Rural special school in NSW;
• In 2011 began Four Blocks in every classroom
for a minimum of 2 hours a day;
• 70 students – wide range of disabilities;
• 27 students assessed completely at beginning
of year.

86. Emergent vs. Conventional

87. Emergent Students
• Doubled their knowledge of concepts about print
• Increased letter identification
• Slight improvement in phonological awareness
• HUGE decrease in “no response” particularly in
letter identification
• Every student able to contribute a writing sample
at end of year as every student had a pencil
• Three emergent students became conventional
readers and writers

88. Conventional Students
• At beginning of year averaged:
– Word identification – Grade 2
– Listening comprehension – Pre-Primer
– Reading comprehension – Below pre-primer
• At end of year averaged:
– Word identification – Grade 3
– Listening comprehension – Primer
– Reading comprehension – Primer
• On average across all areas, students improved
one grade level

89. Other outcomes
• Decreased challenging behaviour
• Increased attention span
• Increased language skills

90. “No student is too
anything to be
able to read and
write”
David Yoder, DJI-AbleNet
Literacy Lecture, ISAAC
2000