How to teach reading to children with autism and language delay

This is always one of the hottest topics on my special education Face group.  How are we going to teach kids to read and write? 

Even if your district level or school has adopted this prestigious reading/writing curriculum which may require ongoing professional development from the experts from the east coast, you will quickly find some students are not getting the benefit. They just fall into the crack.  

As special education teachers, we end up exploring adapted curricula to supplement the gap. This year I have used some parts of 4 different curricula to increase literacy skills for my kids. 

1. Primary Phonics

This is a patterned and simple layout of the workbook teaching students letter sounds, simple CVC words, and simple reading comprehension. It's a sentence level of comprehension work, but very useful for my early learners. Each unit has a structure of the same/similar activities and repeats the pattern with a different set of words. "Make a sentence" from a word bank component is one of my favorites. 

2. Edmark 

This is a sight word-based reading approach- "Recognize/Find the word", "Say the word", "Spell the word", and "Use that word in the sentence". It may be good for those who have difficulty grasping the idea of letter sounds. 

3. Lexia

It's another phonics-based reading program- and my school district has adopted it for all students. I find that it is super simple and highly structured for younger students to follow. My 3rd-grade daughter actually loves to do it every day-  

4. N2Y

I hear more and more teachers started to use this widely known common core aligned curriculum. There are choices of using Current Event News (n2y) or monthly lessons. Based on the topic, there are some hundred pages of worksheets, smartboards, iPad activities I can use in a group setting. Some activities (level 1) are pretty simple for anyone can complete with some modeling such as matching, tracing, and counting. Also, I like the maze, social studies component (map), and webbing activitiy.