There are many ways for teaching children with special needs. In this article, you will learn about various ideas that will help in easing the language experience for children with special needs.
A large extent of our community is still unaware of the capability and potential of children with special needs. Many children in the world today, suffer from dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, visual perception disorders, auditory processing disorders, and ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder].
The children with special needs often lag in their ability to process and understand the information, unlike their peers. They may face difficulty in listening, writing, thinking, speaking, spelling words, or making mathematical calculations. As a teacher or parent, you must learn strategies and find out ways that will help in teaching a child with special needs.
Is it a challenge to teach children with special needs?
Yes, it is a challenge to teach or handle children with special needs. However, carefully crafted strategies may increase the chance of teaching special children.
Both parents and teachers can improve the learning skills of special needs children. Inclusion is a great strategy that will help children to not stay alone in the classroom, playground, and lunchroom.
The children with special needs love the presence of their peers in the classroom. Both teachers and parents need a personalized strategy to teach children suffering from different kinds of special needs such as ADHD and autism etc. It is a responsibility of a teacher to use creative and innovative measures to make their classroom interesting for these children with special needs. You should make some adjustments to enhance the learning environment. These efforts help to create a learning experience that enables these children to achieve the best results.
Ways For Teaching Children with Special Needs
1. Make Classroom Organized
A well-structured and organized classroom can become a very useful way to educate children with special needs. Keep all things and daily instructions with labels and stick them in the classroom. A well-structured classroom is an important support for children throughout the whole day to promote interest or engagement in the learning activities of the children. Moreover, they also learn social skills, management of behavior, and communication skills because of a well-organized classroom.
Here are some ways to make an organized classroom:
- Daily schedule sample
- Datasheets
- Personal workstation
- Checklist of quality guidelines
- Making teams
Read More: How to organize a classroom for children with special needs?
2. Limit Distraction
The children with special needs get easily distracted. As a teacher, you must keep them engaged with developmentally appropriate personalized content. Personalized content can increase the interest level to keep children engaged and reduce the chance of distraction. Use physical alphabet boards, charts, flashcards, and drawings to limit the distraction.
Moreover, these all efforts can help you to make your children more attentive in your classroom. A teacher must make personalized content from a child’s surrounding with the help of parents to promote the knowledge and development of the children with special needs. Here are some tips on limiting the distraction in a classroom:
- Avoid screen exposure
- Encourage the parents to help their children
- Minimize the lights and sound distraction
Read More: 12 Ways To Limit Distraction in Children with Special Needs in the Classroom
3. Use Music and Voice Inflection
You can use songs and voice inflection while teaching children with special needs. Music and different kinds of voices are excellent methods to promote the development and functioning of the brain in children. However, it also helps in making a strong interpersonal relationship between you and the child.
Teachers should use a short song as students finish up one task and move to another. As students may respond well to varied voice inflection and tone, you should use a mixture of soft, loud, and whisper sounds. A teacher can make different sounds of animals and birds that will help them learn about different animals and birds. Using music and different voices is a good idea to keep children engaged on the subject.
Read More: 4 Ways to Use Music With Special Needs Students
4. Breaking Down Instructions into Smaller and Manageable Tasks
As a teacher, you should use simple sentences. Break down a process into smaller steps for a better understanding of students. A well-defined instruction reduces the chance to make mistakes, whether the children with special needs perform their tasks or project in the classroom or at home. Make sure that all the instructions you are giving to children should be verbal and written. You should also give the task to children for home so that parents can participate with children to complete the project. Moreover, It will help in building a strong parent-child understanding and relationship.
5. Discover Their Strengths
Every child has a unique ability, interest, and strength. However, teachers and parents need to find out that in what field the child is interested. You must make a schedule for your classroom with different activities so that it becomes easy for you to observe the interest of your kid.
All kids with special needs love encouragement, support, and attention. Here are some tips that can help you in knowing the strength of the child with learning disabilities.
- Keep all the things in order and plan ahead
- Find out the fields that the child shows interest in
Read More: How Teachers Can Discover Strengths of Special Needs Children
6. Use Visual Aids
The ability of learning is not the same for all children with special needs. Some children learn better with reading and some are better at listening and reading. Visual aids such as flashcards, pictures, drawings, and graphs are the concrete representation that can help you in communication.
Moreover, these visual aids help children to understand the instructions that you as a teacher or parent want them to learn. Visual aids help in supporting the emotional behavior of the child. In addition to that, the visual aids also make your learning engaging and help calm down the agitated or angry child.
- The use of visual aids helps children to understand verbal instruction and how they can respond to different situations to solve the problem.
- Visual aids help in overcoming various environmental-related challenges.
- Visual aids help in strengthening social and emotional skills.
Read More: Benefits of visual aids to teach children with special needs?
7. Make Classroom Rules
Teacher can take initiative to make the classroom rules such as be kind, share, take care of your things, wash hands, say please, and thank you with images and post them in the classroom. A teacher is supposed to make a daily routine for the children to read all these every day.
As a teacher, you must make sure that all the children understand the classroom rules. These rules help the teacher to maintain discipline in the classroom, which is a key factor to make your teaching environment distraction-free. Healthy learning helps children with special needs for self-regulation and increases executive function by promoting independence.
Read more: Why it is Important to make classroom rules for children with special needs?
8. Friendly and Safe Classroom environment
Children with special needs are very sensitive. So, it is important to provide them safe and friendly classroom environment to get a positive outcome. The rude behavior of a teacher directly affects the output of the children. Keep your behavior polite and friendly while teaching children with special needs. So, make sure whatever instruction you are giving should be clear and understandable to all the children in your classroom.
Read more: How to create a friendly and safe classroom environment for children with special needs?
9. Peer Compatibility
A well-organized classroom for children with special needs improves peer compatibility. A peer can become a role model for classmates, especially those with autism. In the classroom, when children work together on a project, or some group activity, this improves their teamwork and relationship. Children with special needs can learn many important things in a group.
Read more: 5 Ways to promote peer compatibility in a classroom for special needs children?
10. Have a Preplanned Schedule
A teacher should make a preplanned schedule for children with special needs. It helps children to keep the excitement for the activity to be done on the next day of school. The preplanning of activities is done keeping in mind the learning ability and interests of the children. It is a crucial role of a teacher that every child’s need is suitably addressed.
Read More: Benefits of a preplanned schedule in a classroom for special needs children.
11. Teach Social Skills
Children with special needs face challenges in maintaining social interactions. In order to enhance their engagement with the people around them, you can introduce social skill building exercises. Social interaction helps the children in real-life situation handling. An efficient teacher helps the children in learning how they can participate in social activities.
Read More: Benefits of teaching social skills to children with special needs
12. Provide Enough Break Time
Do not bore your children in the classroom by teaching only. Make your teaching plan very interesting by adding small games, break time, yoga and stretching or reading storybooks, and listening to music. These activities serve as a healthy break from academics and allow the child to relax and refresh their focus.
Read more: Importance of providing break time for children with special needs in the classroom
There are many ways for teaching children with special needs. The above suggestions or ideas will help in easing the language experience for children with special needs. However, alphaTUB helps parents and teacher in improving their skills for better early literacy and language development among children with special needs. Visit TUB Academy to know more about the various courses or contact us.
