Training Students With Learning Disabilities
Thursday, May 10th, 2012Teaching students with learning disabilities is always a big challenge for any teacher. It requires a lot of patience, kindness and hard work. On the top, first priority is to make child comfortable and calm and the same is to be achieved by providing extra care and learning material that matches with the learning disabilities.
Help has finally arrived for children with learning disabilities with parents and teachers ready to acknowledge the existence of such disabilities and willing to take measures for making children’s lives the easier for it, especially their academic life. Parents have to be perceptive to problems in comprehension and coordination in their child and get the situation diagnosed. The teacher then takes up from there to provide a suitable learning environment for the child. The teacher needs to make sure that the child is adjusted to learning with other children in the classroom. The child should also be taught in ways appropriate for his learning ability.
The first thing a teacher needs to do is build a rapport and mutual trust with the student. It is important for the child to feel accepted and respected with his or her learning disability. The teacher can do this by being appreciative of the child’s contributions in class and by avoiding to offer help when it is not required. Most children with learning disabilities can perform their daily work on their own and should be allowed to work independently when they desire.
In the classroom, make sure the child is seated in a place where you can notice him or her. Do not interpret a lack of response from the child as a lack of attention or concentration. Inspire the child by highlighting examples of people who succeeded in life despite their learning disabilities. Provide a congenial classroom environment by removing physical distractions such as noise or noxious paint fumes.
Among all the learning difficulties that children face, none is as common as dyslexia. Dyslexia has also gained more recognition by the acknowledgements of several well-known people and showbiz celebrities having dyslexia. When teaching children with dyslexia or general comprehension disabilities, make sure that you rely more on oral communication than on written communication. Provide oral instructions and explanations when describing a text or an activity. Incorporate practical work into the lesson to reduce the pressure on comprehension of written information. Provide reinforcement through visual communication like charts and tables. Chapter outlines can also help children get an idea of the course content.
When providing reading material to the child, make sure that it is appropriate for the child’s ability to read. It is better to provide an audio tape along with the book because children with dyslexia find a combination of visual and auditory cues more conducive to reading and comprehension. It is even desirable to assign reading with illustrations as it helps children to comprehend and remember the information given in the text. In class, make sure you read out to the student and ask him or her to follow it on the page.
Make sure that the tests you prepare are not biased against children with learning disabilities. Given that most children with learning disabilities have reading problems, make sure you incorporate oral questions or questions requiring practical work in your tests. Avoid questions that require a lot of written responses. Substitute oral responses for written ones or assign someone to write down the responses for the student while he or she dictates the answer.
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