While the I.E.P was in progress child A informed me that he finds it very difficult to communicate with other pupils this is due to him having special educational needs. Child A finds it difficult to communicate due to him feeling like other people are treating him differently because of his condition, all he wants is to feel ‘normal’ like every other child. To help child A develop his social and communicational needs in the future we will arrange ‘friendships groups’. These will be introduced at the beginning of the new school term in order to help child A improve his social interaction skills by letting him meet new friends. In year 1 child A is well known and liked but he feel his peers are treating him differently due to his peers knowing
Through learning about the differences between friends, children can be better prepared for real life. As a teacher, there are challenges when a student has significant learning or behavioural needs, but in many ways, this just keeps a teacher ever vigilant of the need to be a lifelong learner.
Forming and maintaining positive relationships within a school setting is of great importance. To have good relationships with pupils, staff and parents is not only beneficial to the school but also to pupil’s achievement.
Because of a disability, a child may struggle to establish friendships leading them to feel isolated from their peers, this results in the child’s self-confidence being affected and the child struggling to manage their own feelings. As a result this can lead to feelings of depression, self-harm and mental health problems. By not managing their own emotions a child can then lack empathy and be pushed further aside from their peers. A child with a disability may be at a higher risk of being bullied.
The key is to adapt your behaviour, speech, body language and communication according to your audience. A toddler or a younger child will need simpler words, shorter sentences and some physical contact such as cuddles and high fives for reassurance, younger children also have much shorter attention spans so learning through songs, pictures, games and play may be beneficial, this again will allow the child to see you play with them or cuddle them allowing a bond to form and trust to build.
A,B) MSTT met with Serigo and Celso and examined his cognitions around meeting new friends. Celso explained he does feel anxiety when he's around his peers. He explained he does not feel they understand him. MSTT and Sergio encourage Celso to start by making friends in school because the school setting he's in now have peers with similar issues has him. Engaging with these peers may be easier for him because these peers could relate more to him. Celso agreed and was able to reach out to a couple peers in his class. He was even able to engage
Effective communication is the most important part in developing positive relationships with children, young people and adults. Some pupils that struggle with their learning and/or have confidence issues may find that they can’t communicate with all of us, therefore, treating that pupil in a calm, positive, praising and gentle manner could mean the difference between them trusting us or closing down and giving up. I believe that children should be spoken to
The common traits of ASD, which include anti-social and often disruptive patterns of behavior, can make children with autism challenging for typical learning children to approach. Though the issue of including children with disabilities in mainstream classrooms is a complex one, peer-mediated interventions can promote the growth of social skills at every level of education. By educating the general population of typical peers and empowering them to be a part of the process a dent can be made in the social exclusion often experienced by the ASD children in mainstream settings. Implementing these interventions enriches the lives of all of the children involved, “possibly developing sustainable social relationships” expanding the effects of the program beyond the academic setting (Hughes et al., 2013). Also, these methods provide teachers an unobtrusive method of teaching that has benefits for the entire class. These methods could be helpful to other student populations that have intellectual
Communication skills – A child or young person’s communication skills have a massive impact on their overall development. Children who are lacking in communication skills can become easily frustrated and may begin to show aggressive behaviour. As communication skills require listening and the processing of information, children who have this difficulty will find it hard to concentrate in activities that involve these types of skills. Literacy is also linked to communication so, children with lack of these skills can find it hard to learn to read and write.
Communication differences – It is important to know the children in your school well as some may have communication difficulties which are not apparent on first meeting a child. A good example of this is a child who is on the Autistic Spectrum as their interpretation of social situations and abstract language tends to be greatly underdeveloped. You must speak plainly and with no ambiguity so as to no cause confusion. Children with a mild hearing loss may just need you to speak slowly and clearly, a more severe hearing loss may require sign language for effective communication and so it may be necessary to take training in sign language if a child with severe hearing loss is coming to your school. Children with speech and language difficulties
Emotional and behavioural difficulties – making friend or relating adult or behaving properly in school.
According to Lavoie, social skills are more important for teachers to develop than math, reading, or writing. Everyone wants to feel included, appreciated, and loved. By teaching social skills, teachers are helping students with learning disabilities be successful in making and maintain friendships and increase their quality of life. Lavoie has stressed the importance of learning appropriate social skills. School is a job for children. Children spend 1,000 hours in the classroom, the rest of the time is spent at recess, in the hallways, on the bus, or at home. According to Lavoie, researches have linked learning disabilities to school failure and to social isolation or rejection. At the same time, social isolation and rejection is caused by
Alex needs to be involved with his friends for his emotional well-being. Alex is facing struggles with peers inside his school and with Mr. William’s. According to the text, “social relationships are necessary for the child to gain experience in learning about others’ points of view (Piaget, 1932/1965). They contribute to the child’s sense of security and connectedness (Berndt, 1982), and foster the development of the self-concept (Mead, 1934). These three benefits are not as separate as they may seem but are, instead, three highly interconnected outcomes of positive social contact. (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015, pg
For some children, an assessment will need to be carried out by an educational psychologist especially if the communication difficulties they have are connected with learning difficulties. Once this is discovered they can then work out what type of support the child is going to need to help them, a co-operative method is often needed to make sure that all of the professionals involved and the parents and the setting work together.
While in ninth and tenth grade, I constructed projects that deal with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). In ninth grade, I focused on raising awareness about the social isolation that students with IDD are faced with in and out of school. This project was important to me because I was once in a special needs classroom and I remember the feeling of loneliness that I felt. I never want any student to go through that dilemma that I was faced with on a daily basis. However, I had a caring mother and grandmother that fought to provide me with the best education that was possible for me to obtain and I was able to mature out of those classrooms to the point where I was put in classes with the mainstream students. I want every student, no matter their standardized test scores or popularity, to know that they are important and that they are just as important as everyone else. We all can’t be smart like Albert Einstein or as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe, but we can be perfect at being ourselves and doing the best we can in order to make sure that we continue to better the world. Furthermore, the project that I worked on was titled, “IB Social” and it brought about the Best Buddies program to my school, which matched students with and without IDD in one-to-one friendships. Many students have enjoyed this program and a plethora of
There are several key issues apparent for Belinda, one of which is social isolation. Belinda has withdrawn from her family and no longer spends time with her friends. In becoming socially isolated, Belinda is at risk of disruption to her social development leading to an increased likelihood of failure to achieve in the future (EPPIC, 2001). This is evidenced by the fact that Belinda’s grades have dropped significantly over the past six months.