Enseñar a usar el lenguaje escrito a niños con necesidades educativas especiales

In this article we present a series of reflections on teaching written language to children with special educational needs. The central idea proposed is that to appreach this task, the concepts of reading-writing and difficulty need to be reconceptualized. From our point of view, the main objective of literacy in persons with special educational needs is their inclusion in literate communities. Firstly, therefore, we approach the reconceptualization of teaching written language, traditionally focused on the teaching of the written code, and explain the importance of focusing teaching on the social functions of reading and writing. In doing so, our goal will be to train boys and girls and enable them to use written language in real situations, without limiting ourselves to the teaching of the written code. Secondly, we reflect on how difficulties in learning written language are conceptualized and show how these difficulties can be understood at distinct, not necessarily hierarchical, levels. Lastly, we provide two examples from our research-intervention activity in a special education school, in which we approached the teaching of written language from a functional perspective.