Fifty most essential survival vocabulary words and 50 most essential survival vocabulary phrases produced from a survey of 80 special educators are listed. The words and phrases were compiled to aid development of a protection vocabulary, particularly for adolescents with severe reading difficulties. (CL)

The authors reviewed studies on teaching reading comprehension to students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with a focus on text (academic reading) comprehension and sight word (functional) comprehension. Eleven of 754 studies met the inclusion criteria: participants with ASD, published in English in a peer-reviewed journal, and use of an…

The article describes activities (such as reading and interpreting restaurant menus) designed to teach survival skills to secondary special education students. (CL)

Describes a parent workshop designed to teach parents how to teach survival reading skills by using menus, signs, and cereal boxes. (MKM)

Discusses practical strategies reading teachers may employ in dealing with state-mandated minimal reading requirements. Includes cautions and suggestions for dealing with test limitations. (TJ)

Describes an investigation that showed that abbreviations in classified ads are difficult to comprehend and suggests that instruction be given in understanding abbreviations as a real life reading skill. (MKM)

Reports a series of experiments on the difficulty of reading and following instructions and describes activities used to help children who were poor readers learn to read instructions for specific purposes. (GT)

Describes the kinds of reading needs foreign students meet in college and in situations in daily life; offers practical teaching tips, such as providing instruction in word analysis, sentence structure analysis, study skills, skimming and scanning, and critical reading. (MKM)

Tips for helping children develop skills in reading directories, timetables, maps, signs, newspapers, credit forms, and consumer information. (SJL)

Suggestions from readers include a list of 144 practical things to read, and ways to use sustained silent reading in the secondary school classroom. (MKM)

This article is intended to provide adult basic education teachers with examples of functional learning activities for their students through use of the newspaper. It lists activities which are illustrations of those that can be used to teach functional skills in the key areas of reading and computation. For reading, suggested activities include…

Discusses the importance of combining functional reading with meaningful daily activities in the student's home, school, community, and vocational training areas. Emphasizes the need for severely handicapped and severely handicapped autistic students of limited English proficiency to be provided instruction in English as well as Spanish.…

Describes how to select functional materials and techniques for teaching reading survival skills. (DD)

Suggests that competency reading programs should be based on a definition of functional reading that applies reading skills to real-life tasks, that materials should be real and timely, and that activities should center on finding meaning. (MKM)

Presents a taxonomy of graphs, including lineal, quantitative, spatial, pictorial, hypothetical, and omitted graphs. Provides illustrations of each kind of graph and suggests that reading teachers take the responsibility for teaching graph reading and drawing skills. (MKM)