Archive for September, 2011

Special Needs Education

Special needs is a blanket term used to describe an overwhelming number of diseases and disorders. These disorders are diverse, and can describe mild learning disabilities, severe mental retardation, psychiatric problems, mobility problems, anxiety disorders and any number of other difficulties that must be overcome. What is common to all of these children, though, is that parents and educators should pay extra attention and be sensitive to these needs in order to promote healthy childhood development into adults that are as functional as possible. Often the self-teaching, play-to-learn approach presented by educational toys are a-n ideal means of helping children to overcome the common difficulties incurred by learning and other disorders. Some characteristics are common to many disorders, and many kinds of educational toys can help children overcome these problems.

Frustration

Special needs children often feel a great deal of frustration with the world around them, as they are met with more difficulty than their peers in mastering basic tasks, and because they often struggle to understand their environment. Educational toys provide children with a sense of satisfaction and self-achievement. This positive, rewarding experience can help to soothe the frustration that is understandably experienced by these children. Read more

Balancing General and Special Education Services

Historically, special education services delivery was on a pull-out model. This means that the child was removed from the general education classroom for separate instruction. It may be the child was in a self-contained classroom (all day placement) or in a resource classroom (maximum of half-day placement).

As a result of lawsuits, most districts have shifted from pull-out to inclusion models for everything except speech and language, occupational and/or physical therapy, and specialized assistance for the hearing or visually impaired students. These remain pull-out because the instruction is individualized and intense for short lengths of time, usually 1-3 times per week for 15-30 minutes a session.

In the inclusion model, students receive the same instruction as their general education peers. Sometimes the special education teacher or assistant is in the classroom with the child to assist instruction and/or task completion. Most of the time, the student remains in the general education classroom and is expected to behavior and work as all other students. Read more