To increase participants’ knowledge of language development and communication skills as outlined in the following Exceptional Student Educator Competencies revised in 2009:

  1. Identify the sequence of expressive and receptive language development and the components of language structure.
  2. Identify communication deficits and select appropriate interventions.
  3. Select strategies for integrating communication instruction into educational settings.
  4. Select appropriate assistive technology and alternative communication systems to facilitate communication.
  5. Identify the sequence of typical reading development (e.g., prereading level, learning to read, reading to learn) and the critical components of reading development (e.g., phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension).
  6. Identify the terminology and concepts of literacy development (e.g., oral language, phonological awareness, concepts about print, alphabet knowledge, decoding, vocabulary, text structures, written language, and motivation).
  7. Identify the characteristics and purposes of various reading programs (e.g., core reading program, supplemental reading program, intensive intervention program).
  8. Identify characteristics of reading difficulties.
  9. Identify and select prevention and intervention methods for addressing reading difficulties.
  10. Identify the early phases of word recognition within the decoding process (e.g., pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic).
  11. Identify explicit and systematic instructional methods for promoting the development of phonological and phonemic awareness.
  12. Identify the processes and skills (e.g., graphophonemic, morphemic, syntactic, semantic) that effective readers use for word recognition.
  13. Identify explicit and systematic instructional methods for developing reading fluency (e.g.,     practice with high-frequency words, timed readings, repeated readings, read alouds, choral reading, recorded books).
  14. Identify explicit and systematic instructional methods and strategies for increasing vocabulary acquisition (e.g., appropriate choice of words for instruction; multiple exposures; teaching word learning strategies, such as word analysis and contextual analysis).
  15. Identify explicit and systematic instructional methods and strategies for facilitating students' reading-comprehension and critical-thinking skills (e.g., use of graphic and semantic organizers; use of multiple strategy instruction; teaching summarizing, monitoring comprehension, question answering, question generating, and recognizing story structure as comprehension strategies).
  16. Identify explicit and systematic instructional methods for developing phonics skills.