EDEC201 Infant and Toddler Relationships

Introduction

Special needs and diversity reflects two significant concepts to understand, in view of early childhood education. Special needs represent variety of difference among early childhood education that found significant to remember that the socially and culturally constructed phenomena could be impacting the early childhood education. There are various barriers for the children who are facing special needs and might not cause disability and limitations depending upon approach of the educators.

The broad categories that has been defined for special needs or neurodevelopmental needs, behavioural or social emotional needs and physical and sensory impairment needs. The different conditions reflect special need in early childhood education where taking a holistic approach is significant representing diversity and need for inclusion in early childhood education. Diversity and inclusion might represents the practises that tutors could consider while accessing phenomena like physical access to different learning environment, access in sense of financial means. Participation could be referred for such phenomena and support could be provided for these phenomena in order to practise in culture behaviour in early childhood education (Chong & Lu, 2019).

The purpose of discussion includes identification and analysis of different strategies that could be supporting learning needs of special needs students in early childhood education. 

Identification and explanation of strategies supporting student with special needs

Special needs might come with purpose of special education that is helping student with learning disabilities and understanding the concept of literacy and numeracy. There are three types of special education interventions like remedial intervention, preventive intervention and compensatory intervention for adapting teaching strategies among students with special needs and working towards literacy and numeracy, it is important for taking few steps like discussing and establishing learning expectations, discussing and establishing behavioural expectation, understanding the schedule in advance, and clear with material needs for lessons. Moreover there could be various tools that could be used in order to help people with special needs to learn literacy and numeracy (nam.edu, 2022). Some of the specific strategies recommended for teaching special education classes include

Formation of small groups

This is power of the basic aspect as people with disabilities or special needs might not be able to work in large groups. Formation of small groups with two or maximum three students among the class as per their level could be helpful with personalising teaching. For example maths class might come with grouping on the basis of working method, basic numeracy skills to be separated with advance group working on geometry skills. Students could be group among similar skill levels where the objective is to provide education pathway and more concise skill development depending on their special needs and concerns.  This represents preventive interventions, we are maintenance of a specific schedule could be considered ( Loeb & Grissom, 2011).

Establishing expectations

Expectations is an important aspect specifically working with special needs students as discussing and establishing learning expectation is the initial step as the student will understand what they will be doing during the lessons and how much time they might take for every activity. This is to pre-defined aspect like telling the students today we will be learning about new vocabulary words in the story. This represents a clear communication with students specifically with special needs along with your parents. Teachers are usually working with large group of students, however special needs students might need to encourage pulling out behavioural expectation and academy expectation.

The deliberate way will be to instructing students for raising their hands before speaking; this represents a verbal consent for students. Another example would be letting students to know what they are expected at the end of the day we are making a list of activities, rules and policies for how to behave could be created. For this creating both could be used to offer student progress while teaching session (Harbour & Hughes, 2015).

Breaking down steps and blending basics with specialised instruction

This strategy represents teachers to break down the steps instead of use deep that could be daunting. For specific lessons, book, content or assignment and making it more manageable for the special needs students breaking it down into smaller steps could be helpful for such individuals. For example a separate assignment could be prepared into task and highlighting the important aspect within a certain section. The practical step could not only help such students to feel that they’ following a particular lesson plan, however also helps tutors for correctly assessing the same. Moreover considering a diverse class with special needs students, blending the basic with specialised instruction could be considered. This is instructing multiple level students with general concepts of teaching to the whole group while parting with the individual instruction (Gillies, 2016).

Think-pair-share 

This strategy could be an excellent tool for asking students to reflect upon a topic for some minutes. This includes requesting each partner up to discuss their thoughts with one another in order to improvise the literacy among the group involved. Moreover getting everyone to engage and sharing their ideas as a collective in class will be helpful for them to improvise communication and literacy. This must come with keeping reading comprehension or avoid special needs students to pay additional efforts or avoid daydreaming (Barrett, et al., 2015).

Alternative assignment and test

This strategy is working towards diverse schooling system that is emphasising on evaluation and test. Some students who are facing special needs could be challenged by taking test and might. This represents letting students show or express in their own way how they are gaining the understanding of a particular subject and may lead to an alternative solution to smaller assignment and test as well. A teacher could let a student offer a presentation instead of a written paper depending on the special needs and allowing them to consult with specific journal or book or might allow additional time during a test. This represents dividing test into smaller sections and having some alternative test depending on the special needs of student (Brooks & Normore, 2015).

Universal design for learning

In order to enhance numeracy and literacy, one of the appropriate strategies or practice universal design for learning curriculum approach could be considered. This study presented that the materials accessible for all type of learners needs to be implemented in a classroom. This might have different options like print, reading, text to speech, digital and audiobooks. The different types of learners might access to different types of reading material and learning material considering their special needs (Canpolat, Yildrim, & Canpolat, 2015). Moreover there could be different text options considering approach like digital text where the text can be lost, choice of screen contrast and colour could be change depending on disabilities of the students.

Moreover transcript for audios or videos with captions could also helpful for some special needs students who might take time to understand literacy. This technique could be helpful and use for knowing students and asking parents about preferred learning method depending on the student need. For example students with autism spectrum might found sensitive to noise and overloaded information. Universal design for learning could be helpful for professionals as well as students to apply to any special education classroom (Bertrand & Rodela, 2018). 

Checking student performance

Student performance needs to be checked specially with special needs students in order to go watch them mastery of lesson content. For example students doing maths problem might ask them for demonstrating the formula in between the performance as they are using to arrive a particular answer. Moreover sharing their own thoughts towards the main character of story in between specific chapter or performance could be considered (Gamble, Peteraf, & Thompson, 2018). This will be used for helping students with special needs correcting their mistake while sharing tips on checking maths calculation or avoid spelling errors. Moreover in order to avoid time test in high-pressure with special needs, this strategy could be appropriate for the situation where they do not allow them for demonstrating the full scope rather potential time to share their in between performance and reducing the anxiety of failure at the end (Ada & KurtuluÅŸ, 2010).

Theory with respect to teaching with special needs

The above section represents strategies for teaching students with special needs and promoting literacy and numeracy. Vygotsky’s cognitive development theory represents that cognitive abilities are found to be socially constructed and socially guided. The theory presents culture serving mediator for forming and developing specific abilities like memory, learning, problem-solving and attention (mcw.edu, 2022). According to this theory social interaction is playing important role for student learning and suggesting learning first with person-to-person interaction.

Moreover the theory is suggesting private speech allowing students for processing what adults are trying to apply and said in a specific situation.  The strategy of think pairing and sharing has implemented considering this theory where teachers could ask students to keep their hands up if they want to communicate. Moreover interacting with one another and discussing with one another in a group that is working with the internal speech and social interaction helpful for improvising the cognitive development skills for each students (Davis, 2015).

Piaget’s theory is another theory in early childhood or developmental psychology that could be implementing in classrooms. This theory is representing how inclusive environment could have been created for special needs students. According to this theory individuals need to adapt to their environment and for which to process could be considered for everyone to fit with its environment (Foldness, 2016). This represents accommodation and assimilation process for transforming environment considering the pre-existing cognitive structure. Assimilation represents process of transforming the environment where accommodation represents the process of changing cognitive structure while accepting something from the environment.

Considering this theory it is being suggested that the intelligence is changing as children grow. This represents the child cognitive development with acquiring knowledge and child has to construct or develop a mental model of the world. This justifies the strategy adopted in previous section considering breaking down steps and blending basics with specialised program. This represents that basics with specialised or advanced learning might be included in the program in order to understand the growth of cognitive development among children and they could grow as the knowledge enhances. Moreover alternative test could also justify through this theory while constructing a model where different methods of material and test could be implied for learning new skills and concepts for special needs students.  This represents further using approach of new idea with what students have already learned (Demir, Kilinc, & Dogan, 2017).

Moreover system theory and concept of exclusion and inclusion could be implied for helping special needs students to form classroom with diverse students like special education needed for special needs and advance education teaching for usual studying pattern. This strategy adopted of universal design for learning could be justified through this theory of inclusion in learning, as different children with special needs or different needs could be adopted through a universal design of learning while using different tools and methods of learning (Epstein, 2018).

Conclusion

From the discussion it can be concluded that there are various barriers for the children who are facing special needs and might not cause disability and limitations depending upon approach of the educators. The broad categories that has been defined for special needs or neurodevelopmental needs, behavioural or social emotional needs and physical and sensory impairment needs. Three important theories of early education that includes Piagets theory, Vygotsky theory and system theory and concept of inclusion justify this seven teaching strategies for special needs students in early education.  

Literacy and numeracy’s ability of students represent ability to read, write along with applying mathematical concepts, which is at times difficult with special needs students. Special needs students might face various neurological issues, disabilities, diagnose with further assistance for disability is with medical, psychological or mental health. The strategies justifying the theories included  forming small groups,  tableting expectations, break down steps and blending basic with more specialise learning, checking student performance, universal design for learning, alternative assignment and test, and think-pair-share strategies.

References

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