Week 5 Task #2 Working with special needs students Current Issue Report #4

meeting needs of students with special needs

To create a supportive learning enviornment for students with needs start with the relationships. Create opportunities for students to interact by designing some relationship building activities. For example, one teacher mentioned taking three minutes in class to have students group themselves according to animals or foods they like, or their birthdays. When students see what they have in common with one another, they begin to build trust and relationships. Realizing that they might have a lot in common, that someone else in the class is “just like me”, can be used as a springboard to ongoing relationship building.

When you have a mixture of different special needs in your classroom offer opportunities for students to engage in reading together. Place students into mixed ability groups and have time to interact with each group. Students need to hear fluent reading and have practice, so by pairing students with fluent readers, students can build their skills. In these activities, both students get practice modeling good reading and working together. Some tools used for this are Lexia and Alphabet Prosody.

 The tools and strategies teachers can use when possible, co-teaching is a great way to provide additional support in the classroom. It opens up the opportunity to work with small groups or to design independent learning centers, which focus on specific skills. One EdCamp attendee shared that in her classroom, two learning centers may be focused on the same skill but delivered in a different format, or offer adaptations to help students become more independent. Making time to work with the special education teachers and share strategies is key.

Reference:

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/04/working-with-special-needs-students-what-do-all-teachers-need-to-know/