Literacy and Learning Disabilities

Making choices about learning and work

Determining a Curriculum

When planning with the adult who has learning disabilities, you have five major curriculum options to choose from. To select the appropriate curriculum option, ask yourself and the adult these five questions:

Basic skills: Does the adult need to learn basic skills for acquiring and expressing information?
Learning strategies: Does the adult need to acquire learning strategies for completing tasks efficiently and effectively?
Critical content: Does the adult need to learn critical content necessary for daily interactions and responsibilities?
Social skills: Does the adult need to learn social skills for interacting successfully with others?
Self-advocacy: Does the adult need to learn self-advocacy strategies for communicating his or her interests, needs, and rights?

You and the learner may deterime, based on the learner's needs and goals, that it would be helpful to select more than one curricular option. It is possible for the learner to use more than one type of curriculum simultaneously. This is especially true for the self-advocacy option. It could be argued that self-advocacy skills should be an assumed need unless the learner provides evidence otherwise and should be taught along with any other curriculum chosen.

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