Such thing as understanding of the students` behaviour and their process of thinking contribute significantly to a successful teaching as well as helps in designing special programmes that would be appropriate to the children with special needs.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of students who suffer from emotional, medical or behavioural disorders. Another problem is that they tend to express their feelings in quite different ways; some of them are shy and calm while some of them are angry and frustrated. All these characteristics interfere with an educational process, so this means that they have to have an individualized educational programmes or even curriculum.
The main objective of each curriculum is to adjust the already created syllabus for the specific needs of students with disabilities. Talking about adjustment we mean that some of the students required certain changes in classroom activities, educational material, types of assessments and other elements of an educational process (Quinn, Osher & Warger, 2000).
But before talking about specific strategies and methods, we should understand that such categories belong to the people with special needs:
children with physical and sensory difficulties
children with intellectual difficulties
children with behaviour and emotional disorders
children with communicational and language difficulties
children who suffer from difficulties in studying and learning the material.
Most of such children have a variety of problems concerned with the cognitive dysfunction and communication-emotional issues. As for the last category, it is very hard to determine a single problem that prevents a student from a successful acquiring of knowledge, so it is the biggest category and probably the most mysterious and hardest to deal with.
So the children are categorized in this way as all of them possess a chain of certain characteristics which includes:
-complications with acquiring basic skills such as reading, writing, listening, speaking as well as learning basic subject as mathematics; such complication may expressed in only one subject or skill and in all of them
-complications with following the instructions of the teacher, inability to understand the task and advices of the teacher
-complications with the handwriting which interfere with conducting of written activities and written types of assessment
-complications with correct pronouncing of words which interfere with conducting of oral activities and oral types of assessment
-complications with the limited active vocabulary, so children can hardly express their thoughts and show their knowledge
-lack of memory capacity so they can hardly remember the task.
All this characteristics result in introverted and extraverted behaviour as some of the students required additional attention, while the other are too shy, some of the students can easily be distracted from the work they are conducting.
Considering all the characteristics above, it is very important that instructions are very clear and effective. There are several principles that help in achieving it:
Effective teaching is the one that provide children with an opportunity to acquire as much knowledge as possible.
Regarding that effective lesson should be well-planned; it should recapitulate the previous lesson so the students use their experience pragmatically.
All the task and work should be guided by the teacher or an instructor, using a direct specific approach to each child.
Children should also be able to do an independent work, so some of the activities have to introduce students to independent practice while using all their knowledge and experience.
Also in an effective lesson, all the work conducted by the students should be appropriately revised in time.
The teacher has also several explicit requirements that should be pursued. First of all, an effective teacher have to show a full understanding of what he is teaching, so he have to be really proficient. Secondly, he must inform the students and be clearly aware of the aims, objectives and predicted outcomes of each lesson (CurriculumSupport, 2016).
The lessons should be logically divided into several parts that will be responsible and distinguished as warming up, recapitulating of previous class, presenting of new material, use of activities to set learn the information, assessment of knowledge and receiving of feedback. The time needed for conducting all the activities and work should be determined by the possibilities and needs of the students.
The instructions should be presented with a vocabulary that is appropriate to a current level of children; otherwise they will not understand the task and will not do a thing. Each student should be provided with an opportunity to share his thoughts and ideas as well as to communicate with each other. It is recommended that each lesson is focusing on only a few skills to develop as it will make students stay concentrated and reduce the risk of distractions. All the activities used by the teacher are supposed to be student oriented.
It does not mean that all the work should be individual, work in pairs and group work is also an essential part of an educational process. If the activity is focused on the communicational purpose, teacher should not correct the mistakes as it would only frighten the children, but when the activity is focused on the accuracy of the information and student`s knowledge, all the mistake should be corrected.
Planning the lesson, we have to consider three major aspects. First of the aspect is the content of a lesson. The real problem dealing with the content is that it should be chosen according to the syllabus and still provides enough knowledge for all the students. Sometimes it may be very hard as each student possesses its unique individual study capacity.
Presenting new material, an effective teacher have to take care not only about the informational part of the class, but about the entertaining and socio-cultural. In other words, the information should not only teach a certain statement, but keep the students interested and motivated as well as reflect some other extra aspects of the field.
All the activities should be conducted in a friendly manner and a form that students are already acquainted with. But they should not be too easy. They should require only those skills, the students already possess. The teacher must let students understand that even the smallest steps leads to success.
Another significant feature of an effective content is that it should relate on the students experience and the real world situations they may encounter in their life. As for the assessment methods, all of them should be conduct in a manner familiar to the students. The students with special needs should be provided with a special reader if they fail to read correctly themselves; additional time for doing the task; break times so there were no such a pressure; an opportunity to choose a preferable type of assessment.
The second aspect of effective strategy is instruction. They should be clear and logical. The instructions determine the activity of a student during the lesson, so they result in student getting the information and acquiring knowledge that are obligatory for completing the task given by a teacher or an instructor (Davis & Florian, 2004). Unfortunately, many students fail to recognise and understand what they are wanted from.
That is why a teacher should clearly present each step of the instructions, inform the students about the criteria of the assessment, speak about the way of interactions between students and teacher as well as between students themselves, be prepared if some of the students need some additional or more detailed information about the task.
And finally, teacher is also responsible for the third aspect which is a classroom environment. Each lesson should be presented with the rules that will determine a friendly environment and deprive the classroom of bad behaviour. The room should also be arranged in such an entertaining way, that it will just encourage and motivate students, but not distract them from educational process. All the classes should be provided with audio and visual aids that will serve this purpose as well as help those students who have impairments of different kinds.
References
CurriculumSupport,. (2016). Teaching students experiencing difficulties in learning: Information for teachers of Languages. Retrieved 13 January 2016, from http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/languages/languages/german/assets/proreading/learn_diff.pdf
Davis, P., & Florian, L. (2004). Teaching strategies and approaches for pupils with special educational needs. Annesley, Nottingham: DfES Publications.
Quinn, M., Osher, D., & Warger, C. (2000). Educational Strategies for Children with Emotional and Behavioural Problems. Washington, DC: Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice.
