Hi all,
Dear colleagues from all around the world,
I am very sorry of not posting anything new for a while because I was so busy. I had to prepare my students for different levels of competitions. I also had to prepare students to take their exams in English and so on. To tell the truth, all my dear students passed their exams. On the other side, my school children won the first places during the competitions. I am so happy as well as they are.
In this post, I am going to say a few words about teaching English to kids who have special needs. I am so interested in this subject matter, because in my country every teacher has got a lot of problems about teaching these kids. I say this because teachers, in my country, neither have any seminars or any professional development or any lectures about this kind of teaching nor they have an assistant who will help them in the process of teaching kids with the special needs. It is a big problem which my colleagues meet from day to day. Searching through the Internet, I found some rewarding tips that can be useful for many teachers who also have the same problem.
English as a foreign language for children with additional educational needs
It is often thought that foreign language learning for a child with
additional educational needs can waste valuable time that could be spent
more profitably on teaching 'more relevant' skills and that it may
confuse
children who already have problems mastering their mother
tongue. However, it is important to provide every opportunity to expand
and enhance the range of learning experiences available for these
children by including them in a wide range of activities throughout
life. One of these activities is foreign language learning. This article
builds on the principles of inclusion and is written in the ethos that
children with additional educational needs should have the same right as
other children to experience and enjoy foreign language learning, and
in the belief that they have the potential to benefit and to progress
linguistically, psychologically, cognitively, socially and culturally.
Diverse needs
Children with
additional educational needs may have physical and conceptual
difficulties, mild and moderate learning difficulties, severe learning
difficulties and emotional and behavioural difficulties, and will
usually require some sort of extra support. This article will address
the needs of children with mild and moderate learning difficulties,
which can include short attention spans and a lack of concentration,
memory problems -
A school policy
In order to cater as effectively as possible for the diverse learning
needs of such pupils, a school should agree its policy and implement it
as a team. This will include decision-making concerning methodological
approaches, assessment procedures, ways of supporting the learner, and
how best to organise classes depending on the context in which you work.
both short and long term, poor generalisation skills,
auditory discrimination problems, visual discrimination problems, a lack
of imaginative thinking and poor eye-hand co-ordination. Their needs
are diverse and, when deciding what to teach and how to teach, foreign
language programmes should aim to start with the needs of each
individual child in order to build on their strengths.
Methodological approaches
As we
can see above, some of the special needs described are not so very
different from those of our 'regular' pupils, and many of the familiar
principles which underlie good educational practice, as used by foreign
language teachers of young learners, are appropriate. These include
effective teaching strategies and techniques, selection of materials,
task design, including differentisation, and clasroom management skills.
Teaching strategies and techniques
Good teaching strategies and techniques include the planning and
stating of carefully balanced, varied learning sequences with clear
achievable objectives, so children know what is expected from them. They
will also include using the mother tongue, as appropriate, to
contextualise and support learning, so children can relate something new
to something familiar and thereby develop a sense of security;
providing clear, meaningful, concrete contexts in which to present
language; providing plenty of repetition, recycling and reviewing; using
plenty of mime, signs, gestures, expressions to convey and support
meaning; involving children actively in the learning process as much as
possible through the
use of action rhymes and songs, stories, colouring,
making things, dancing, drawing, total physical response activities and
games; stimulating childrens' senses as much as possible through
multi-sensory aids.
- Assessment procedures
Children
need to be clear about the learning objectives, which could accommodate
the graded objective principles and the Council of Europe statements:
for example, I can understand and use familiar everyday expressions.
Once these are established, and with systematic post-activity reviewing,
children will be able to perceive their progress. In many cases, this
will be small-step progression, and needs to be established by the
school and team of teachers as part of their overall policy.
- Materials selection
Materials need to be varied, accessible and clear and provide plenty of
visual stimulus and support in the form of pictures, objects, puppets,
realia, storybooks, videos, ICT, etc.
- Task design
Tasks should provide a reasonable degree of effort or challenge within
the linguistic and cognitive abilities of each child, and have
short-term goals and clearly identified steps leading to successful
completion, as well as purposeful outcomes allowing immediate feedback
and positive reinforcement. In order to design tasks, teachers need to
be able to judge whether the level of demands made on each child is
appropriate and also to identify the types of demand made. These relate
to concepts and notions of language, such as shape, size, colour,
location, cause and effect, and language functions, such as describing,
classifying, sequencing, predicting etc. Teachers also need to be aware
of the kinds of concepts which their pupils can cope with at specific
stages of their development. Furthermore, each learner possesses their
own learning styles and intelligences and some tasks may only be
suitable for specific learning styles or intelligences, making them
difficult for learners who do not possess these or have low levels of
specific types of intelligence. Differentiation of tasks is also central
to successful methodology and needs to be done in a way that the areas
of experience, for example, a topic or
theme, will be the same for each
child but the depth in which it will be covered will be different.
- Classroom management skills
A well-managed classroom will be one where routines are established,
the teacher is firm but fair and establishes a secure, non-threatening
learning environment. He or she will explain methodological approaches
to avoid a mis-match of expectations and to establish clear ways of
working, and will praise all effort, however small. Classroom dynamics
will be analysed and seating arrangements planned accordingly. Teacher
talk will be analysed in order to keep this clear and simple for
instructions and demonstrations, to be sensitive to the level of
challenge different questions imply and to pitch them appropriately for
individual children, and to avoid excessive teacher talk, which can be
confusing. Pupils' attention will be focussed so they keep on task and
teachers will be aware of the behavioural effect of activities which
settle or stir, occupy or involve, and sequence these appropriately.
Supporting the learners
In
addition to the methodological approaches described above which support
the learner, the school may decide that the help of a support teacher or
teaching assistant is required. Their help may be requested on a
full-time, part-time or sessional basis and they may work with
individual pupils, several pupils or a whole
class or department. In
whatever setting a support teacher may work, he or she can help the
pupil's learning by having a clearly defined role in the classes, time
to share the planning and evaluation of lessons, adequate resources. In
addition, the importance of their role in the staff team must be
recognized.
Organising classes
From a Vygotskian viewpoint, a child with special needs who is
integrated into a regular class would be able, through co-operation and
interaction with classmates, to develop their knowledge, language and
thinking. In a primary EFL context classes tend to emphasise oral
communication, especially in the initial stages. Thus, one of the main
weaknesses of the child with additional needs, that is, writing, is
avoided. This can be
beneficial in that he or she starts out on an even
footing with his academically more able counterparts.
Many of the
responses required are whole-class ones so a child is rarely singled
out and can learn to communicate in a foreign language without fear of
failure. Integration may require the presence of a support teacher to
deal with possible unpredictable behaviour which may disrupt classmates
and incite general bad behaviour; to explain to classmates a child's
particular needs so they can understand and respect these differences
and respect the additional effort such a child may have to make in the
learning process, to diffuse any potential peer ridicule through such
explanation as above, to help with activities that may require cutting,
pasting, writing, to help explain the teacher's methodology and to
reinforce the classroom code of conduct and to liaise with parents as
required. Once basic oral/aural skills have been acquired and other
pupils progress perhaps at a faster rate, a school may feel that
separate specialised classes may be more appropriate to meet the
children's needs, although these classes would be integrated within the
framework of the regular school.
The teaching of foreign
languages to children with additional educational needs is complex and
each school needs to decide on a policy that is best for their context. A
great deal of support can be found through
CILT who
publish an annual Languages and Special Educational Needs Bulletin and
have a discussion forum to generate ideas and mutual support for all
those who are involved in teaching modern foreign languages to pupils
with special educational needs in both special schools and mainstream
classes.
Here is also an address of the web site where you can find different activities and addresses which people from all around the world use in the process of teaching English to kids with special needs (http://www.jetprogramme.org/documents/conference/tokyo_ori/2012_to/special_needs.pdf). I also want to hear from you and all your advices and suggestions are welcome. Feel free to write to me. I want to gain new knowledge about this.
Best regards
