Strategies for teaching students with special needs

STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

In recent years the majority of children with disabilities in developing countries are out of school, while many of those who are in school are enrolled in special schools away from their families, friends, and peers. However, more and more children with disabilities enroll in regular schools where they play, learn, and grow up with their non-disabled peers. To ensure that all children have access to quality education in a regular community school, we should look critically at school policies and practices to make sure they encourage and facilitate the development and participation of all learners.

Many teachers, school administrators and parents are worried about the consequences of enrolling children with disabilities in their schools. They concern about how this may affect the performance of the other students in their schools, since they find themselves in competition with other schools for student enrolment, funds and support (this is the reality for many schools throughout the world). However, if all school became inclusive and learning-friendly, and would welcome all the children from the surrounding communities into their schools, these fears would be much less relevant because all the schools would compete on a more equal footing. Inclusive and child-friendly education should therefore be seen an approach to school improvement: inclusion is about making quality education available to all.

According to the UNICEF, a child with special needs is one who requires some form of special care due to physical, mental, emotional or health reasons. Because each child is unique and has unique needs, no single approach to caring for children with special needs can be applied to all children, even those with the same disability or special need.

Every child is a special person, but some children may need special care due to physical, emotional, health, or development needs. The kinds of special needs vary greatly. They may be simple allergies, developmental delays, a diagnosed disability, or a serious illness. Here are some of the broad categories of special needs:

Disabilities are an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus, disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.

In other words, it is the consequence of an impairment that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, or some combination of these. A disability may be present from birth, or occur during a person's lifetime.

According to (Weitz, 2001) disability refers to a reduced ability to perform tasks one would normally do at a given stage of life and that may result in stigmatization or discrimination against the person with disabilities. Identifying Barriers to Learning, Development, and Participation Early detection (identification) of barriers to learning, development, and participation is essential for later interventions to succeed. Children with poor grades are consistently classified as having a learning disability, often without any proper assessment of why these children experience barriers to learning, development and participation. Some of these barriers may instead be caused by cramped classroom conditions, inflexible curricula and examination systems, learning material that lacks relevance to many children, or the lack of child-friendly and child-centred teaching approaches. Therefore, labelling of children based on unqualified and random assessments is a major challenge to inclusion and education for all. The list of barriers found above can be used in identifying the environmental, attitudinal, and individual challenges that children with disabilities face in our classrooms, schools, and communities. The way we have taught children with disabilities in the past was often determined by their medical diagnosis. We thought that children with similar diagnoses were all supposed to be taught the same way.

Today we know that learning is influenced by many factors other than the impairment the child may have. There are presented 11 Practical Tips for Removing Barriers to Learning, Development and Participation, create an environment in which all children feel equally valued. Children should be allowed to communicate in their first language, even when this is different than the language of instruction used in school, whether sign language or another minority language. If you or none of the other teachers in your school speak the child’s first language (mother tongue), try to find someone who does, such as someone from her/his family or community. Many children with disabilities will need more time than other children to express themselves. Try to ask questions to children (especially those who are struggling with academic learning) that you are confident they will be able to answer. This will build confidence and motivate children to continue their learning.

Many teaching strategies that assist students with disabilities are also known to benefit students without disabilities. Instruction provided in an array of approaches will reach more students than instruction using one method. Moreover to this, it should be considered that people with developmental disabilities are most often strong visual learners. They understand what they see better than what they hear. Visual supports, also called visual cues, are tools that assist learners in a variety of ways. They enhance learning by helping visual learners understand activities, tasks, directions, and discussions. Visual supports facilitate attention-getting; make ideas and concepts more concrete; aid in recall of verbal information; serve as effective prompts; cue appropriate behaviour; and ultimately facilitate independence. The usage of visual supports or cues can enhance learning and engagement thus reducing the potential for problematic behaviour. Teacher offers the following suggestions to assist instructors in meeting the growing diversity of student needs in the classroom, particularly those with disabilities. There are any additional strategies instructors have found helpful.

• Begin class with a review of the previous lesson and an overview of topics to be covered that day. At the end of the lesson, summarize key points.

• Highlight major concepts and terminology both orally and visually. Be alert for opportunities to provide information in more than one sensory mode. Like many people, individuals with developmental disabilities are visual learners and learn better with visual supports. When working with both adult and youth audiences, it is important to understand the visual learning style as well as how and why visual supports help individuals to be more successful in the learning environment. Visual supports can be helpful in managing behavior and reducing anxiety as individuals transition between activities, schedules, or settings.

• Emphasize main ideas and key concepts during lecture and highlight them on the blackboard or overhead. Visual support refers to using a picture or other visual item to communicate with an individual who has difficulty understanding or using language.

• Speak directly to students; use gestures and natural expressions to convey further meaning. Ranging from body movements to environmental cues, visual supports capitalize on a person's ability to gain information from the sense of sight. For example: body language (facial expressions, movement of body)

• Diminish or eliminate auditory and visual distractions.

• Present new or technical vocabulary on the blackboard or overhead, or use a handout. Natural environmental cues (printed material such as menus or directions on packages or machines), traditional tools for organization and for giving information (schedules, maps, assembly instructions), specially designed tools to meet specific needs (timers, task organizers)

• Use visual aids such as diagrams, charts, and graphs; use color to enhance the message. A sequencing chart is one example of a visual support that prompts the learner to complete the steps in the correct order to complete the activity. There are two ways of displaying the sequence: numerically separated boxes or a more narrative style.

• Give assignments both orally and in written form; be available for clarification.

• Provide adequate opportunities for participation, questions and/or discussion.

• Provide timelines for long-range assignments.

• Use sequential steps for long-range assignments; for example, for a lengthy paper

1. select a topic

2. write an outline

3. submit a rough draft

4. make necessary corrections with approval

5. turn in a final draft.

• Give feedback on early drafts of papers so there is adequate time for clarification, rewrites, and refinements.

• Provide study questions and review sessions to aid in mastering material and preparing for exams.

• Give sample test questions; explain what constitutes a good answer and why.

• To test knowledge of material rather than test-taking savvy, phrase test items clearly.

• Facilitate the formation of study groups for students who wish to participate.

• Encourage students to seek assistance during your office hours and to use campus support services.

As such good teachers are always learning about their students how they see the world, how they think, express themselves and learn. Knowing and caring about students as learners helps teachers form relationships, earn students’ regard, decide what and how to teach, assess student understanding, communicate with families about student progress, in doing this investigation you are trying to learn how one child experiences the world what do things look and feel like to this child, trying to see things from the child’s perspective. Your basic task is learning how to observe and think about children and about their experience of school and the world outside school. This includes being reflective about yourself as an observer and discussing your thoughts and observations with others, to point out certain deficiencies, mainly methods, which hinder effective child study follow-up, to consider the needs of teachers for a broader understanding of the relationship of child study to instructional improvement, and to point out where emphasis should be placed on children with special needs so that the teachers themselves will point out their weakness and ways towards more effective strategies on how to understand more of children with special needs.

Ibragimova Shakhnoza

Syrdarya region

Sardoba district

12^th school English language teacher

REFERENCES:

1.Weiner, Lawrence H. (1969). "An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Resource Rooms for Children with Specific Learning Disabilities". Journal of Learning Disabilities 2: 223–229.

2.USAID/UNICEF/UNAIDS (2002) "Children on the brink 2002: a joint report on orphan estimates and program strategies", Washington: USAID/UNICEF/UNAIDS

3.Weichel, J. (2003, October). Keynote Address at the Akron Area Association for the Education of Young Children Annual Conference, Akron, OH.

4.Malam Ahmed Tanimu Mahmoud& Malama Hauwa Larai Ibrahim (2010) “Children with special needs”. Journal of Learning Disabilities