What strategies have you used to support children with special needs in your classroom?
I have one little girl in my class who, my teacher informed me, has Autism. She is mostly non-verbal, but as she is getting more comfortable with me, has started to mouth and even say some words. I can tell this week that she has opened up to me a lot. She went from not responding to me at all to wanting to hold onto my arm during our entire walk on the beach for P.E. : ). During math, I encourage her to use the calculator and multiplication chart that Kristen gave her. Before she had these, she was having a lot of difficulty understanding concepts, such as area, because she couldn’t perform the multiplication step. Now, she can learn the concepts more easily because she isn’t getting stuck at not being able to multiply. During the math test, I circled the problems I wanted her to complete, and with the use of her calculator and some verbal redirection, she did very well. During writing activities, such as journals, I gave her markers and let her draw her thoughts, which seemed to work well. I also shortened her spelling words from 25 words to 10 and paired her up with a class buddy for a homonym game we played in language arts.
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