Teaching Children with Disabilities

 Special Education  No Responses »
Dec 202011
 

Teaching Children with Learning Disabilities

It is observed that teaching children with disabilities in learning is often more difficult than teaching handicapped children. In this concept, the teacher has to use different teaching techniques altogether. She has to first understand the mental condition of the student, assess his learning capacities and the rate at which he can learn, and then make use of appropriate teaching techniques. Teachers have to give additional attention to students who have learning disabilities. They need to make the students understand in methods which they would consider comfortable.

Read more on:

  • Learning Disability: Types of Learning Disabilities
  • List of Learning Disabilities

Teaching Children with Physical Disabilities

On the other hand, teaching children with physical disabilities or handicaps is just a matter of providing motivation. Handicapped children should in no way be made to feel that they are someone different. Their teaching should be included in that of other children. They should be made to realize that they are also like other students and not those who cannot do certain tasks. The instructors do not find it that difficult to teach children with physical disabilities as their knowledge grasping strength is good.

Teaching Strategies for Children with Disabilities

There are some good and effective strategies for teaching children with disabilities. During teaching, the instructors should present the questions in the simplest and clearest manner, so that children with any kind of disabilities should properly understand. Encourage the students to participate in the answering process and guide them to the appropriate answer. For underprivileged children, the pace of the curriculum should be decreased and the portion should also be lessened.

It would be most beneficial if disabled children are taught using figures, slide-shows, and overhead projectors. This would help them better understand the fundamental concepts while teaching. When it comes to teaching children with disabilities, the instructors should focus on the outlines and basics, instead of going deep in the lessons. Moreover, they should use hand techniques, facial expressions, and body language to get the message across to disabled students.

With motivation, this strategy certainly is very effective. Instructors should consult with school psychologists to come up with more useful methods for letting disabled children understand what is being taught. In order to teach students with physical incapabilities, assistive methods and devices can be used to improve the learning.

Read more on:

  • Teaching Children with Special Needs
  • Autism Teaching Strategies
  • Teaching Children with Cerebral Palsy
  • Teaching Children with Autism
  • Teaching Children with Down Syndrome
  • Teaching Autistic Children

This was some information on teaching children with disabilities. The best strategy to teach is to have the students motivated before imparting the lessons. For self motivation in learning, remember that you should not treat the child as if he is different from the rest.

 Posted by at 4:38 am  Tagged with:

Special Schooling

 Special Education  No Responses »
Dec 202011
 

The contrary is what happens today. Almost everyone willing can go to school and moreover, there are also special schools, such as schools for blind people, schools for minorities, schools for girls or schools for boys. Is this way of specializing schools efficient? It may be for some categories, but it surely isn’t for other.

In the first place, schools for moderate special needs children have proven their inefficiency. They seem not to stimulate enough the cognitive resources of the children and in addition they don’t contribute to the socio-emotional development of these children. Being in a special school puts a permanent stigma on them and they also fail to integrate those children in the community later on. Of course, special schools are needed for severely affected children who represent a menace to other children or who are too impaired to be solely under the supervision of non-psychiatric or physical specialists. But in these schools one can find also children which have less serious impairments or problems. These are those who have physical disabilities, learning disabilities, ADHD, the Asperger syndrome or other mental impairments which the psychologists consider to be light and under control.

Nowadays, some countries work on integrating these children in normal schools. They do it because in normal schools these children have the opportunity to have a healthy emotional and social development, and also they are stimulated to develop they intellectual potential. Specialized persons, such as psychologists, are focused on informing the parents, the teachers and also the “normal” students about these mental issues, about their characteristics, trying in the same time to demolish the stigma laid upon these children. There are courses meant to prepare and train the teachers to deal with such children in order to offer them the biggest chance for cognitive, emotional and social development. In some schools, the governments hired specialized people to work together with the teachers for the optimization of their activity. Research has shown this is a more effective procedure than the one offered by the special schools.

Secondly, schools which gather only the genius have also proven to be less efficient than schools who maintain a balance. The first category may lead to the development of a more than sufficient competitive spirit, but also the lack of diversity of friends, the lack of choices. The solution, of course, is not treating the prodigious children as “normal” children, because by doing that they may not come to develop their full intellectual potential, and they may quit school because they can become bored of the simplicity of the things they are taught. The solution is to socially integrate them in the classroom and then offer them harder and more complex exercises that the others are offered, and double the speed by which they are supposed to finish their tasks. By this, they will remain interested; they will develop their cognitive resources and also will have the social variety encountered in everyday life.

The distinction will eventually come, when they will choose their high schools and later on, when they will apply for university. By that time they would have had time to make their own decisions regarding both their professional and social life.

Thirdly, special schools are not efficient for minorities. Separating minorities from the citizens of the country they live in, only deepens the stereotypical way of thinking and the conflicts. By integrating minorities in a normal school, the conflicts may be resolved and the stereotyped demolished. Living with them, the children learn that they are not different, or abnormal, that they could be friends and they could help each other. They teachers and the parents are the key. They have to be taught to guide their children into understanding and accepting ethnic differences. The parents and the teachers themselves have to learn to accept and understand these differences in the first place.

In conclusion, special schooling may be efficient in some cases but seriously damaging in others.

 Posted by at 4:32 am  Tagged with:

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

 Special Education  No Responses »
Dec 152011
 

Now the following provisions have been explained in a kind of summarized manner, and leads and procedures with regards to this law have been included in appropriate places.

The provisions of the act start with the definition of student who qualifies to benefit from protection and services as under this act. The jurisdiction of the act extends to almost all the schools and educational institutes, and to any student who is in between the ages 3-21. An interpretation of the act states that any student whose disability prevents him/her from taking education in a proper manner or a person who needs additional, different, specialized services or any sort of help to do so, qualifies to receive benefits under the provisions of the act. Now of course, the disability would include, physical disability such as hearing ailments, psychological disability such as autism and learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

1. Individualized Education Program
The basic and also probably the best provision of the act is the Individualized Education Program (IEP). As per the act, public schools are to design an independent Individualized Education Program, which is to be implemented in the Least Restrictive Environment for the benefit of the child. The program in itself is unique and is written down so as to provide qualifying children/students with the services that they would need to overcome hindrances while learning. The program is a very detailed one and it consists of a substantial number of provisions, services and learning aids and in short, all possible help that the student would need to learn. In order to design and oversee the proper execution of the entire program, an IEP team is put together upon the detection of the disability in a student. This team consists of several people who include, the parents of the student, teachers, school counselors and psychologists, administrator or a representative of the CSE (Committee of Special Education) and any other person or expert who would be able to help the student.

The act provides a detailed definition of the term services, it would conventionally include anything such as help, therapy, counseling, technological aid and health services.

2. Free Appropriate Public Education
Proving to be a highly useful provision of the act, the Free Appropriate Public Education is chiefly a right of a qualifying student, which is granted by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This right and empowerment has ensured that the qualifying student not only gets the IEP, but the services, help and aids as specified in the IEP. As per the act, the right also extends to the point that a student or parents can ensure whether the said program is proving to be beneficial for the student.

3. Imposition of Discipline and Rules and Regulations
A school or educational institution functions in accordance with some discipline to ensure successful educational procedural. The act instructs public schools and said educational institutes to dispense discipline and impose rules that ensure that the disability is accommodated within it. This ensures that no disable child falls victim to rules which may intrude upon his/her disability.

4. Find Child
The Child Find is a part of the program where in the public schools of the districts maintain records of the all children and students qualifying for the provisions of the program.

There are of course a lot of different administrative, appeal and appellate provisions as under the program. However it must noted that any child who depicts any sort qualifying disability, becomes a protected and qualified beneficiary as under the act. The parents also have a lot of rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, in accordance of which they can demand services and benefits and also act within their capacity and rights as parents, which may also include the power to veto certain changes or procedur

 Posted by at 4:28 am  Tagged with:
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