With the last several posts I’ve talked about advocacy, accommodations and the issue of fairness. I feel like it’s time now for me to actually talk about the ways in which I have put these ideas into practice in my own classroom. Whether you are a special education teacher or a general education teacher, these concepts can be explored and implemented without much interruption from the daily routine and it’s well worth the benefit to the student.
Tips for accommodating students with special learning needs:
· Provide Visual and Auditory examples at all times. Rather than expect students to copy notes off the board, provide them with a copy so their full attention can be on you while you are teaching. Help students identify what is important by using colors, stars, circles, underlines, etc.
· Unless the test is in reading, read tests to students. You cannot know what a student really knows if they are being held back by a reading disability. Also, accept oral answers and refrain from using bubble sheets which can be very difficult for students with fine motor skills problems.
· Allow students to dictate work to the teacher or another student who can write it for them. So many students with difficulty writing and forming letters have wonderful, creative ideas but are not able to express themselves appropriately.
· Allow children with math disabilities to use calculators. This is so important! A student can struggle for years with basic concepts and be held back from making real progress. There are calculators these days that can do just about anything from basic addition and subtraction to order of operations and reducing fractions. Why not use this technology that is available?
· Accept work according to the individual ability of each student. Do not compare students to one another, especially from a “normal” child to a child with disabilities. Look for students to improve their individual skills and grade based on that.
· Treat each child as an individual.
· If one way doesn’t work, find another way to teach.
· Break concepts down into the smallest of pieces. Slow down the process. If it slows down the whole class to do this for one student, take the student aside and help him or her separately.
· Finally, (not really finally, there are so many other ways to help) work to make things fun. This will benefit all students, not just students with special learning needs.
2 comments:
You have done a great job of providing resources to teachers of Special Education Students. (Our district calls them SPED students.)I think regular classroom teachers would also benefit from reading your blog and visiting the resources you have included.
Have you ever heard of LD Online? Here is the URL www.ldonline.org.
The Website bills itself as "The world's leading website on Learning Disabilities and ADHD". It seems very informative. Thanks for providing this valuable info.
Those were some great tips! We have to read tests for students in our math class and I really think it helps them focus on the content. We have also allowed students to use multiplication charts to find like fractions on tests because it shows if they know the concept, not if they memorized their facts.
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