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Health & Fitness

Strategies For Your Special Education Classroom

Thoughtful planning and intention can make any classroom a successful learning environment for all students.

Structuring a successful special education classroom takes a lot of work and planning.  It isn’t always easy, and you may learn that flexibility is the greatest asset of any special education teacher.  Because as soon as you think you have it right, the needs of your students may change and you will have to adapt and plan again.  But thoughtful planning and intentional design benefit all learners.

Here are my top five strategies for structuring a special education classroom environment:

1.  A multi-sensory approach to learning 
This is exactly what it sounds like; an approach to education that engages all of the senses.  Some of us learn best by listening, some through reading.  Some of us need to write something down to commit it to memory.  Others won’t remember well unless they repeat it back out loud.  Still others need to touch, taste or even smell to fully grasp a new concept.  Using different approaches increases the likelihood that learning can be meaningful, relevant and lasting.

2.  Individualized expectations
Individualizing expectations are as fair for gifted students as they are for those with unique learning needs and everyone in between.  It is a misnomer that having different expectations for different students in the same classroom is unfair.  Comparing students to one another in a special education classroom is arbitrary.  All students should be working toward progress from their own current level of functioning. Individualizing doesn’t “dumb down” the curriculum or hold students back.  Instead, it allows students to focus and thus succeed according to their own individual needs.

3.  Station activities and centers
Centers are areas of the room that are dedicated to learning a specific topic or developing a specific skill and provide students with the opportunity to learn at their own pace.  All students benefit as centers enable the delivery of instruction to be differentiated according to individual students’ needs. There are many different ways to structure centers within a classroom, and choices will need to be made based on skill level, students’ ability to work independently and the number of staff available in the classroom.

4.  Clear of rules and expectations
Behavior management is critical to a successful learning environment.  When students act out or are unable to focus, no significant learning can take place.  Rules for the classroom and students behavior need to be fair.  Create a classroom environment that reinforces positive behavior, stimulates attention and imagination and makes teacher expectations clear.

5.  Be flexible!
A teacher’s ability to adapt and change when necessary is critical to the success of a special education classroom.  Seasoned teachers know how to “read the room”.  This means that they are in tune with their students’ needs and abilities and know when something isn’t working.  The flexibility to scrap a lesson altogether when it isn’t working, or even to capture an amazing moment and run with it instead of the planned lesson is a skill that makes a teacher stand out.

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