Teacher Discussion Forums

I am an alt teacher at a junior h school in japan.They have asked me to teach a handicap class each week,I am stumped as in what to do with them.Any suggestions,web sites,etc would be appreciated.A virtual beer for anyone that can help out.Cheers.

Hi- I have taught at a school for the handicapped in Japan before, and what I ended up doing was using materials that I normally would have used with my elementary school kids. I would recommend having a look at some of the songs and games at www.genkienglish.com

Pigpen,

Are you talking about mentally or physically challenged?

Sorry,I should have mentioned mentally challenged.Thanks for your post Glenski and Celeste.

i am studying for a diploma of education in sydney, australia at the moment. we just did a unit in our education psychology class on teaching handicapped students. basically, you should focus on figuring out their individual levels and abilities, as the variation here is about as extreme as you can imagine. people are sometimes labelled handicapped for stuff as diverse as:
- hearing/vision/speech/writing problems
- mild autism
- physical abnormality that in no way affects thought & communication
.. and of course much more

perhaps you could invesigate more precisely what challenges the kids are facing and devise your lesson plans around them. trying to squeeze them all in to something before you know them well enough to assess what's happening is a recipe for .. well .. if not disaster, not a lotta learning

Try looking on ERIC for info on special education. You might also want to visit the ASHA website (The American Speech-Language Hearing Association) or the IDA website (The International Dyslexia Association), depending on the needs of your students.
In fact, once you figure out the diagnoses of your students, just go to an internet search engine and find the national association for each disorder. That's probably the best place to start.

Don't worry, there's nothing scary or overwhelming about special education.
If you already have a curriculum, then start with that and modify your teaching methods according to the needs of the students (e.g., go slower, review more, speak more clearly, do more behavior modification, work more on underlying rules, or ignore the rules and go right to the functional situations, etc.).
If you don't have a curriculum, then start with the language strengths and weaknesses of each student, and figure out how to use the strengths to work on the weaknesses. You don't have to worry about doing things 'wrong' with special education students; just use the best practices you always use with students, and you're likely to be very successful.

Pigpen, how mentally challenged are these students? Are we talking a bit learning disabled? High-functioning trainable/educable students? Do they speak and understand their first language?

When I was sent to a school for the handicapped, I asked my supervisor "What kind of handicapped?". She didn't know, so she called the school and they replied that the students had various mental and physical probalems of varying severities. When I finally got to the school, I taught 3 different classes, and they were indeed a mixed bag. There were a few autistic kids, a couple of kids with down's syndrome, and many other kids with problems that I, a lay person, had never encountered before and couldn't classify. That said, the school was well staffed (Classes of 9 students with one teacher and 3 aides per class) and we all had a great time. There was one boy who caught on very quickly and asked me about a million "Do you like " questions throughout the course of the day.