Pertaining the right kind of knowledge to the students is a tough job indeed, especially when the students are having special needs or ADHD. The special needs educators are not always equipped with the right kind of ideas to deliver the course content to handle these students or rather the situations that might occur due to the improper understanding of the courses by the students. Here is where the requirement of a full-proof mechanism, which shows how the educators can handle the various challenges that might appear in front of them in due course.
In fact, in all possibilities, students who exhibit ADHD’s hallmark symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity can be frustrating to handle for the special educators. Despite the brainpower being there, the new educators might not be able to focus on the material they are working hard to deliver. Plus, their behaviours take time away from instruction and, at times, might disrupt the whole class.
There are certain symptoms that students with special needs might show. They tend to:
- Demand attention by talking out of turn or moving around the room.
- Have trouble following instructions, especially when they’re presented in a list, and with operations that require ordered steps, such as long division or solving equations.
- Often forget to write down homework assignments, do them, or bring completed work to school.
- Often lack fine motor control, which makes note-taking difficult and handwriting a trial to read.
- Have problems with long-term projects where there is no direct supervision.
- Not pull their weight during group work and may even keep a group from accomplishing its task.
Children with ADHD often pay the price for their problems in lower grades, scolding and punishment, teasing from their peers, and low self-esteem. Meanwhile, the special needs educator, feel guilty because he/she can’t reach out to the child with ADHD and wind up taking complaints from parents who feel their kids are being neglected in the classroom. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are strategies the educator can employ to help students with ADHD overcome learning challenges, stay focused without disrupting others, and succeed in the classroom. In the following lines, we will have a look at the various ways by means of which the educator can successfully help the students under their tutelage to attain the successful completion of the course. They should learn about these ways while pursuing the autism teacher training courses so that they don’t falter while starting their career in the sphere of special education.
As teachers, the role of the learners of the autism teacher training courses is to evaluate each child’s individual needs and strengths. The future special needs educators can also learn about the ways to develop strategies that will help students with ADHD focus, stay on task, and learn to their full capabilities.
Successful programs for children with ADHD integrate the following three components:
- Accommodations: what the educators can do to make learning easier for students with ADHD.
- Instruction: the methods the teachers use in teaching.
- Intervention: How the educators head off behaviours that disrupt concentration or distract other students.
As a special needs educator, one can make changes in the classroom to help minimize the distractions and disruptions of ADHD. These are the various ways that the learners of the autism teacher training courses should learn about and implement to make the overall teaching-learning process more incisive and impactful.
- Seating arrangement
- Seat the student with ADHD away from windows and away from the door.
- Put the student with ADHD right in front of the desk of the educator unless that would be a distraction for the student.
- Seats in rows, with focus on the teacher, usually work better than having students seated around tables or facing one another in other arrangements.
- Create a quiet area free of distractions for test-taking and quiet study.
- Information delivery
- Give instructions one at a time and repeat as necessary.
- If possible, work on the most difficult material early in the day.
- Use visuals: charts, pictures, colour coding.
- Create outlines for note-taking that organize the information as you deliver it.
- Student work
- Create worksheets and tests with fewer items, give frequent short quizzes rather than long tests, and reduce the number of timed tests.
- Test students with ADHD in the way they do best, such as orally or filling in blanks.
- Divide long-term projects into segments and assign a completion goal for each segment.
- Accept late work and give partial credit for partial work.
- Organization
- Have the student keep a master binder with a separate section for each subject, and make sure everything that goes into the notebook is put in the correct section. Color-code materials for each subject.
- Provide a three-pocket notebook insert for homework assignments, completed homework, and “mail” to parents.
- Make sure the student has a system for writing down assignments and important dates and uses it.
- Allow time for the student to organize materials and assignments for home. Post steps for getting ready to go home.
It goes without saying that it is difficult for the new special needs educators to be able to ensure that he/she is providing the right kind of education to the young learners under their tutelage. The aforementioned ways of delivering the course content to the students would come very handy for the educators who are looking to make a mark in the sphere of special education or teaching the students with ADHD, especially those currently pursuing the autism teacher training courses.