Students with special educational needs

A learning disability (or LD) is a specific impairment of academic learning that interferes with a specific aspect of schoolwork and that reduces a student’s academic performance significantly. An LD shows itself as a major incompatibility between a student’s ability and some feature of achievement: the student may be delayed in reading, writing, listening, speaking, or doing mathematics, but not in all of these at once.

A learning problem is not considered a learning disability if it stems from physical, sensory, or motor handicaps, or from generalized intellectual impairment (or mental retardation). It is also not an LD if the learning problem really reflects the challenges of learning English as a second language.

Assisting students with learning disabilities

There are various ways to assist students with learning disabilities, depending not only on the nature of the disability, of course, but also on the concepts or theory of learning guiding you.

• Behaviorism: reinforcement for wrong strategies
• Metacognition and responding reflectively
• Constructivism, mentoring, and the zone of proximal development

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (or ADHD) is a problem with sustaining attention and controlling impulses. As students, almost all of us have these problems at one time or another, but a student with ADHD shows them much more frequently than usual, and often at home as well as at school. In the classroom, the student with ADHD may fidget and squirm a lot, or have trouble remaining seated, or continually get distracted and off task, or have trouble waiting for a turn, or blurt out answers and comments. The student may shift continually from one activity to another, or have trouble playing quietly, or talk excessively without listening to others. Or the student may misplace things and seem generally disorganized, or be inclined to try risky activities without enough thought to the consequences.

How to teach students with ADHD?

Research shows that ADHD can be reduced by taking a certain medications commonly known by the name Ritalin. But however, teachers are not doctors, it may be more important simply to provide an environment where a student with ADHD can organize choices and actions easily and successfully. Giving a clear rules and procedures can reduce noise or chaotic quality in the child’s classroom life significantly. Whatever the strategies that you use, they should be consistent, predictable, and generated by the student as much as possible. By having these qualities, the strategies can strengthen the student’s self-direction and ability to screen out the distractions of classroom life. The goal for teachers, in essence, is to build the student’s metacognitive capacity, while at the same time, of course, treating the student with respect.

Intellectual Disability

An intellectual disability is a significant limitation in a student’s cognitive functioning and daily adaptive behaviors (Schalock & Luckasson, 2004; American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002). The student may have limited language or impaired speech and may not perform well academically. Compared to students with learning disabilities discussed earlier, students with intellectual disabilities have impairments to learning that are broader and more significant.

Teaching students with intellectual disabilities.

There are many specific techniques that can help in teaching students with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities, but most can be summarized into three more general strategies. The first is to give more time and practice than usual; the second is to embed activities into the context of daily life or functioning where possible; and the third is to include the child both in social and in academic activities, rather than just one or the other.

Behavioral disorders

Behavioral disorders are a diverse group of conditions in which a student chronically performs highly inappropriate behaviors. A student with this condition might seek attention, for example, by acting out disruptively in class. Other students with the condition might behave aggressively, be distractible and overly active, seem anxious or withdrawn, or seem disconnected from everyday reality. As with learning disabilities, the sheer range of signs and symptoms defies concise description. But the problematic behaviors do have several general features in common (Kauffman, 2005; Hallahan & Kauffman, 2006):

• they tend to be extreme
• they persist for extended periods of time
• they tend to be socially unacceptable (e.g. unwanted sexual advances or vandalism against school property)
• they affect school work
• they have no other obvious explanation (e.g. a health problem or temporary disruption in the family)

Strategies for teaching students with behavioral disorders

The most common challenges of teaching students with behavioral disorders have to do with classroom management- (1) identifying circumstances that trigger inappropriate behaviors, (2) teaching of interpersonal skills explicitly, and (3) disciplining a student fairly.

Physical disabilities and sensory impairments

A few students have serious physical, medical, or sensory challenges that interfere with their learning. Usually, the physical and medical challenges are medical conditions or diseases that require ongoing medical care. The sensory challenges are usually a loss either in hearing or in vision, or more rarely in both. Whatever the specific problem, it is serious enough to interfere with activities in regular classroom programs and to qualify the student for special educational services or programs.