Reading Instruction for Students with Mild Mental Retardation: Is There a Best Approach?

This paper reviews what current research says about best practices in reading instruction for students with mild mental retardation. After introducing some key reading issues (such as effects of early reading failure), two principal approaches to reading instruction are discussed: first, the traditional/bottom-up synthetic approach which begins with teaching discrete reading subskills (such as word decoding) and second, the progressive/top-down constructivist approach which engages even beginning readers with literature and stresses students' construction of meaning. Each of these approaches is considered in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. Next, essentials of reading instruction are addressed in relation to special education philosophy and to legislation concerned with the individual needs of students with disabilities. A third approach which attempts to blend the respective strengths of both bottom-up and top-down approaches is then described with reference to the success of some action research founded on such a blended approach. Since this blended approach offers teachers of student with mild mental retardation greater flexibility and a broader range of strategies than either traditional approach, the paper urges more research into its instructional effectiveness. (Contains 23 references.) (Author/DB)