The first grade classrooms use the Health reading series. To adapt this series to meet the needs of children who struggle learning to read. The special education staff have adapted stories from the series by enhancing the text using the Picture It program. This program places picture cues above words so that students can be more successful at reading and can work on the same story with the rest of the class.

The special education staff created individualized books to target the students individual needs. The books are laminated, and the students use dry erase markers to work on items in the book. The marker is easily erased, allowing the student to have almost unlimited opportunities to work on task. Two copied of each book are made. . . one is kept at school, and the other is sent home with the students' parents at the first conference.

White Elementary uses the Animated Literacy program. Part of this program includes drawings that the students do with the teacher after a new letter and sound is learned. The teacher draws only a portion of the picture at a time, and after he/she has finished a piece of the drawing, such as the whiskers, the students do the same on their picture. Some of the students in special education have a difficult time with understanding spatial relations and/or with fine motor skills. These drawings can become very frustrating for them. The special education staff will draw the picture using a yellow marker before the activity, and then the student can follow with the teacher and the rest of the class to trace the picture a piece at a time as it is drawn. These pictures show the "rat" in a "hat" before and after a student has used it.

Another portion of the Animated Literacy program is the use of a Word Wall. Five words are introduced to the children each week and are then placed on the wall. When the words are introduced the class sounds out each word together, spells it out loud together, and then the students write the word on their paper. Some of the students in special education are ready to sound out words, but still have difficulty writing letters. A special education staff member will sit with the student(s) during the activity. When it comes time to write the word, the student will tell the staff person how to spell it. The staff member will write the word with a yellow marker, and then the student will immediately trace the word. This allows the student to remain in an activity that he/she is ready to do (spelling) but has difficulty with only a portion of (writing).

This versatile alphabet chart made from library pockets and index cards can be used by all of the children as they learn the alphabet. Cards can be made to match capital and/or lower case letters, or pictures can be used to match letters to sounds.

This page (made in Microsoft Excel) allows Dylan to work on the letters of his name, while his peers do a similar page working on spelling words.

This is another adaptation (made in Microsoft Excel) for a paper our first grade classes use to practice their spelling words. The children choose the letters for a spelling word that the teacher names, and then write the word in the box on the right. To adapt this , we may limit the number of words on a page, or use colors and boxes to help the children visually organize this task. For some of the children this is all that is needed to assist them in completing the task independently with the class.

Our first grade classes use the Daily Oral Language Curriculum. For some students finding the errors and writing out the sentence from the board is too much. They can still work on the content of the activity with a small adaptation. We write the sentence correctly and incorrectly on a page and have the children find the differences. Once we have identified and talked about the errors in the sentences, the children are able to copy the sentence from the model instead of the board.