Teaching Reading Skills to a First-Grade Student with Mild Intellectual Disability: A Single-Subject Intervention Study

Reading is a fundamental skill that supports independence in daily life activities such as communication, access to information, and social participation, rather than just academic success. For students with intellectual disabilities, acquiring reading skills at an early age is of critical importance for subsequent learning and functional literacy development. Basic skills such as letter–sound matching, syllable recognition, word reading, and simple text reading form the basis of fluent and meaningful reading and are considered necessary for participation in educational and daily life contexts. The aim of this research is to examine the effectiveness of an individualized reading instruction program on the early reading skills of a student with mild intellectual disability. The participant of the research is a 6-year-old first-grade student diagnosed with mild intellectual disability. A multiple-probe design across skills (multiple baseline design), which is one of the single-subject research designs, was used in the study. The dependent variables are letter–sound matching, syllable recognition, word reading, and short text reading skills ; the independent variable is an individualized reading instruction program structured based on evidence-based teaching strategies. Research results showed that the student successfully acquired all targeted early reading skills after the application. Observing performance increases after starting instruction for each skill revealed that experimental control was established. Permanence data collected in monitoring sessions show that the acquired skills were largely maintained. Generalization data, on the other hand, revealed that the student could display the skills learned in different environments and with different teachers. Tau-U effect size analyses supported the visual analysis findings and showed that the intervention had a strong effect. Social validity findings show that both the teacher and the family evaluated the instruction program as functional, applicable, and meaningful for the student. Overall, the findings reveal that individualized early reading instruction is an effective, sustainable, and socially acceptable approach to developing early literacy skills of students with mild intellectual disabilities.