How to Teach Writing to Special Education Students
Do you teach letter writing in your special education class? Do you ever wonder how to teach special writing to special education students? This year we have engaged in letter writing units to develop this functional skill.
I teach my students letter writing in a few specific steps to develop a very functional and intentional program that builds upon learned skills to develop an independent letter writing experience.
I have a unit that follows a pretty specific scaffolded pattern to teach letter writing. I started to develop this mini unit because I was finding that my students really needed the foundation of writing skills before being able to venture into writing friendly letters on their own. My students in my special education class need to have all their steps taught to them in a very sequential order in order to build and develop understanding.
It is so important to teach writing to special education students!
Many people start teaching letter writing in their special education classes with exposure to letters. We would go through a variety of examples, and read read read! I always used the same colour coded technique to demonstrate the different parts of a letter.
Yellow highlighter- Greeting
Pink highlighter- Body
Green highlighter- Closing or ending
After going through a ton, and I do mean a ton of examples, we headed to the next part of the mini unit- tracing and scaffolded letters.
Students had the change to trace a variety of letters which was another way that I was able to teach students and expose them to a variety of letters.
This was another version of looking and following examples, but it gives students a very tactile experience while being exposed to this new skill.
My students are really able to understand the letter writing process, as well as parts of a letter from this very slow and intentional scaffolded writing experience.
After scaffolding letters and having students trace the letters, they are able to work on the letter fill in the blank activities.
These activities are great because it takes some of the portions of the letter out, and students have to use their new found knowledge to fill in the blanks. I always give students some visual options in their word banks to be able to figure out and solve these new levels of letters.
Next, students are able to work on a fully blank letter writing template, that has images and word banks from the board maker program on the bottom.
This is another way you can continue to scaffold the letter writing acquisition process, while slowly building independence.
I found that if I just showed examples, and had students write their own letters, there would be a lot of misunderstanding and anxiety as students were not able to go from the example to their own writing independently.
This scaffolded method has really worked wonders in my classroom for my students!
The last step of the letter writing process that I engage with my students seems pretty simple, giving a blank template and writing letters!
This is so much more than a blank template because students have experienced all the other steps before getting to that blank template phases.
It’s almost as if as things build with letter writing, its like the training wheels are taken off and students are able to bike on their own!
Students don’t really even feel like they are doing a new school completely on their own at this point, because they have been building the foundations of this skill and practice during this entire experience.
There are many ways to teach writing and letter writing, but these are the tips and scope and sequence that have helped me develop a robust letter writing program in my special education classroom.
I have taken some time to create a letter writing package so that you don’t have to! You are of course welcomed to write and create your own package, however for the price of less than a coffee you can grab my print & go package yourself.
You can find this print and go scaffolded letter writing package from my Teachers Pay Teachers store, here. I hope you find this helpful as you continue to teach writing to special education students in your context!
If you ended up using my product, I would love to know how it went!! Connect with me on all my social channels (@specialed.advantage). I’m on tik tok, instagram, pinterest and facebook!!
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