Teaching Students with Special Needs - Basic Notes

It is really important to “get to know your students,” so that the teacher can implement custom-designed strategies to assist them in their learning.

Studies show that “teaching with laughter” is an extremely effective way to teach students with special needs. This may include breaking up lessons with a short Youtube video or other non-related teaching activity, before regrouping and returning to teaching activities.

Structure at home is incredibly important for students with special needs. Parents may need direction for strategies in the home so they can help the student progress in their learning and development.

The “Learner Profile” document is a good one for the students to complete. This can help the teachers to understand the ways that students learn.

Never give students with learning difficulties paper with blank spaces or dot-points. Everything needs to have lines drawn for them.

Many students with learning difficulties may have Executive Functioning difficulties.

Try not to give students paper that is photocopied back-to-back. All sheets need to be separated.

Such students need incredibly explicit teaching and direct instruction.

When covering sentences or words for students to be able to follow logically, cover the top of the sentence or word, not the bottom, so that the flow of reading is not disrupted.

ODD – The four positive comments to the one negative is an important strategy for students with ODD.

ADHD and other related behaviors need to be addressed in a positive way. For example, behavior cards need to say “listen carefully in class” as opposed to “calling out / disruptive”. Obeying these rules then need to be reinforced with rewards.

There is a lot of research to show that students work well with music! Pop music with 60 beats per minute especially works!