Introduction
- 3-5 years old children.
- Special needs.
- Peculiarities of the educational process.
This presentation is based on the discussion of the way children with special needs are educated. In particular, the focus is made on a class that consists of students who are 3-5 years. Attention is paid to classroom instruction, differentiation strategies, learning plans, and assessments so that their relevance to the observed children can be identified.
It is significant for teachers to understand that students with cognitive and physical disabilities are still able to study and reach educational achievements if they are facilitated appropriately. In view of this, much attention should be paid to the identification of the specific problems and differentiation. Educational process should be adapted to children so that it benefits them the most.
Teaching Approaches
The class with preschool children focused on reading was conducted with the help of a multi-sensory approach. The teacher used short sentences for instruction to ensure that they can be easily perceived and understood. In addition to that, she controlled her speech, increasing the volume of her voice when providing instruction and pronouncing words slowly. What is more significant, she used her gestures to ensure student’s understanding. When encouraging them to raise their hands when they hear a particular sound, the educator showed how to do it. When reading a text, she used gestures to emphasize size and direction.
Differentiation Strategies
- Printed and audio materials.
- Written and oral tasks.
Differentiation depended greatly on children’s learning styles and their disabilities. For instance, children who had issues with listening had an opportunity to see what their teacher showed with her hands, and their perception improved. Classroom instruction was adapted with the focus made on a process. In this way, children were able to use both printed textbooks and audiobooks. Depending on their impartments, they could select the most appropriate source of information. Moreover, differentiation affected the end product of education. Students were grouped so that some of them had to deal with writing tasks while others worked on oral assignments.
Technology Tool
It can be advantageous to integrate the optical character recognition for the class (St. John, 2016). This tool provides an opportunity to scan a text and play it. In this way, it can be easier for a teacher to provide some task because, otherwise, she needs to read everything herself. Moreover, this technology can benefit children greatly when they deal with homework. With the help of the optical character recognition, the teacher can create an audio version of a book that is present only online. Thus, the students of this class will have more opportunities to improve their educational achievements. What is more, the use of this technology is aligned with the needs of the students and the differentiation strategy utilized by the educator.
Learning Plans
Learning plans developed for the observed children are similar to those that are meant for ordinary students but include additional elements. For instance, before students are 6 years old, they should be able to retell short parts of stories and to create their own ones. They need to use several tenses, including the future one. Their sentences should be about 5 words long. Finally, their vocabulary should be about 9,000 words (Law, Mahr, Schneeberg, & Edwards, 2017). For children with special needs, it is also significant to ensure that they improve their ability to perceive and provide information. Hearing impairments can require an additional understanding of gestures and ability to use them while expressing personal ideas.
Assessment
- Formal assessment – standard scores.
- Informal assessment – performance.
The teacher uses different types of assessment when she works with her students. For example, formal assessment provides her with an opportunity to avoid biases and to identify issues faced by the students with special needs (Purse, K., & Gardner, 2013). With the help of standard scores, the educator identifies whether the learners managed to reach expected outcomes or not. In his way, if children are expected to develop sentences that are 5 words long (on the average), the teacher can identify if this goal is met after assessing her students and comparing their results with the standard scores. What is more critical, impartments can be identified in this way.
Informal assessment is required to track students’ progress and their ability to cope with the provided tasks. The teacher focuses on children’s performance in this case. It can be used when the educator reads a text and asks her students to raise their hand when they hear the description of the good weather. Capturing their behavior, she can assess learners. Asking questions or encouraging students to retell the text, the teacher also manages to assess their performance. In this case, she can identify how many correct answers were provided out of the total amount. Conducting similar assessments during the course, the educator notices how students study. It also provides her with an opportunity to see whether the interventions she integrates into the learning process benefit students or additional changes are needed.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that educating preschool children with special needs, professionals need to utilize various teaching approaches (such as a multi-sensory one) to ensure that their students can achieve goals identified in the learning plan. The use of additional technology tools may be advantageous because it simplifies the learning process. Student assessment is to be aligned with the performance objectives and learners’ characteristics. If they are not met, intervention activities are required.
References
Law, F., Mahr, T., Schneeberg, A., & Edwards, J. (2017). Vocabulary size and auditory word recognition in preschool children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38(1), 89-125.
Purse, K., & Gardner, H. (2013). Does formal assessment of comprehension by SLT agree with teachers’ perceptions of functional comprehension skills in the classroom? Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 29(3), 343-357.
St. John, K. (2016). Digitization of the journal legacy: Improving access and literature research potential. Journal of Geoscience Education, 64(3), 157-158.