G

The Portsmouth Down’s Syndrome Project’s materials are reviewed in Chapter 14, but the approach may be summarised as follows:

1. Young children who have Down’s Syndrome find it hard to recognise pictures as representing real objects.  For example, while they may well respond to affection from a dog as anyone else would, they find it difficult to recognise a picture of a dog as a dog.  The project therefore begins with a system of teaching words and pictures together.  A child will first learn to match a picture, say of a dog, with another picture alongside one of another object, such as a ball, by placing it on the corresponding picture.  This is a form of picture bingo. The adult will say the word to the child as the picture is matched, and will simply ask the child to try again if  it is not.  The child is not expected to say the word at this stage.  The matching task continues until 8 pictures can be matched, and is a stage which requires intensive work from the adult, who is normally the child’s parent.  A slightly more complex version of this phase involves matching an outline to the picture.
2. Once the child can match pictures successfully, the bingo baseboard is removed, and he or she will be asked to select a picture at the request of the parent.  This is sometimes done with the aid of glove puppets –  “Give Sooty the ball,” etc..  Again, the child is not expected to name the word, and errors are rejected simply by asking the child to try again. 
3. Once the child can select words competently, he or she is encouraged to name them – the picture is presented to the child, who says what it is. 

This phase of matching, selecting and naming pictures is designed to build up vocabulary at the same time as the association of a word with a given picture.  It has been successful in many cases in laying a linguistic foundation without which reading cannot take place, and will not be needed for most pupils who have moderate learning difficulties.  It is, however, important to know about it, so as to have it available if individual children do need it.

The next phase of the Portsmouth approach repeats the matching, selecting, naming process used with pictures with whole words, and this, particularly selecting, has a great deal to offer in work with pupils who have less serious learning difficulties.  Its main strength is that it allows a pupil who has a partial recall of a word, but is unable to recall it in response to print alone – say, on a flashcard – to consolidate and develop this and to be successful.  Games such as Word Bingo have a similar effect – the teacher calls the word, and the pupil has to match it to words on a card – but the Portsmouth version of selecting can be very specifically targeted on words pupils have problems with, and is particularly effective. The Portsmouth scheme goes on to use phonic approaches once a substantial initial sight vocabulary has been mastered.