2.
Working with students who have special needs is a challenge unto
itself. As a teacher, you have to prepare a lesson that will entice
the students to learn and interest them on an educational level that
matches local, state and national standards. In addition to this, you
must also take into account the needs of the students that are
above and beyond the usual needs of your average school age
child. Luckily, we live in an era that has developed technology to
assist nearly all types of disabilities and can narrow the learning
gap that exists between students with special needs, and those
without. In the following pages I have identified several strategies
as well as assistive technologies to help students with auditory,
reading and writing disabilities as well as those diagnosed with
ADHD. I hope you can take these suggestions and incorporate
them into your daily classroom lessons to assist students who
have these types of special needs.
3. Auditory Disability:
Students with auditory disabilities are at a distinct
disadvantage in the classrooms of today. Not only so they
have to learn the material that is expected of them but also
must cope with the inability to hear as their classmates do.
An assistive technology that can be put in place in
classrooms of today are voice amplifiers that will address
these students special needs. When using this technology,
students will wear a hearing aid like device that is linked to
microphone that is worn by the teacher. Operating much
like a cell phone, the teachers words are transmitted
wirelessly to the students ear piece so that they are able to
hear the spoken words of the teacher without disturbing the
other students of the class.
4. Writing Learning Disability
A common problem of in the classrooms of today is the inability of students to
transfer their thoughts and ideas from their minds to their paper. Students can
verbalize sentences and paragraphs that are well formed and accurate with
what the lesson or skill of the day is intended to assess. This same student
though, when asked to write these ideas out, cannot produce the same quality
of sentence structure as when they verbalized it. As a result, the students work
is assessed at a much lower level than what they are able to produce merely
because they cannot transfer it from brain to paper due to a disability in writing.
To overcome this, students may be allowed to use a dictation software or
program such as Dragon Dictation. This computer program takes the spoken
word of a student and “translates” it into typed text in a word document. In this
manner, the teacher is able to assess the students ability to write without
having to go through the usual channels that will make this student appear to
be unable or unprepared. This technology also frees the student up from the
struggle of having to write and think about their sentence structure at the same
time. The teacher is able to work more focused on the students writing skills
without the student feeling the pressure of being graded.
5. Reading Learning Disability
A strategy that can be utilized for students who have a reading
disability will integrate technology into the daily classroom lives
of students. Just as students with writing difficulty can utilize
software to dictate their words to paper, students with reading
difficulty can utilize technology to “read” the text to them as they
follow along in the actual textbook. Either by downloading the
text to a device such as an Ipod or Ipad and then listening with
ear buds or utilizing provided CD’s that come with the textbook,
students can practice following along in the actual text and see
the words as they hear the pronunciation. Through this
strategy, students are able to receive the same material as their
classmates without having to fight through their disability.
6. Teaching students with ADHD can be s struggle to say the least. These students
struggle to stay focused and are also more hyper active than their classmates. These
two issues combined cause the student to miss a large majority of lessons due to their
inability to stay on task and focused on the lesson that is being taught. An instructional
practice that can be utilized to help these students is one known as a Busy Box. In
using this strategy, each diagnosed student will have a shoe box or some other
container that holds objects or learning devices that the student can utilize once they
are finished with work or if they notice themselves getting “fidgety”. Some common
items that are utilized in a Busy Box are play doh, sensory balls or even small hand
held electronic games. The play doh and sensory ball can be utilized during lessons to
draw out some of the students hyper active energy and allow them to stay focused on
the lesson of the day. The small, hand held game can be utilized after a student has
completed work or during down time to practice math facts or some other educational
topic. The use of a Busy Box must also be accompanied by some education on our
part as teachers in educating the students on their proper use. The student must
understand that they utilize the box as a tool to help them stay focused rather than an
outlet for play or distraction. When used appropriately, the box allows the student to
stay focused and be much more productive in learning the intended lesson of the day.
7. Students who are LD in reading are at a distinct advantage in our
schools today due to the nature of their disability. Due to the fact that
most of what we do in class requires some form of reading, these
students cannot even begin to access the material to begin learning. To
overcome this disability, teacher may employ a variety of strategies in
conjunction with one another in order to aid these students. The first
suggestion would be to shorten the length of text required to be read
by the student. If the student sees a page or paragraph that must be
read and feels overwhelmed then they will more than likely not do as
well in comprehending the material than if the material were more
manageable. Using products like Cliff’s Notes or being selective in the
passages that you present your LD readers can make a large impact
on their learning.
8.
A second strategy that can be used for
students who have difficulty reading is having
colored overlays that can be placed on top of
texts to highlight the important portions of the
passage without taking away from the overall
length of the piece. This allows the student to
focus on the important aspects of the text
without feeling left out from the material their
classmates are involved with.
