Teaching approaches for children with intellectual disability

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It is essential that teaching and learning situations for children with intellectual disability are reality-based – ‘learning by doing’. To acquire new knowledge and skills, these children need to experience things actively at first hand. If children with intellectual disability are to learn important number skills, for example, they should learn them not only from maths books, computer games and instructional materials, but also from real situations such as shopping, stocktaking, measuring, estimating, counting, grouping, recording data and comparing quantities. Similarly, reading skills should be developed and practised using a variety of resources such as instruction cards, recipes, brochures, magazines and comics, as well as through books, games and flashcards.

Children with intellectual disability also need direct teaching, with curriculum content broken down into very simple steps to ensure high success rates. Lessons that employ direct instruction use an active style of teaching that gets many successful responses from the children in the time available and makes much use of reinforcement. The method ensures that children master important concepts and skills before moving on.

There is heavy emphasis on practice, but lessons are made enjoyable and entertaining. It has been found that direct instruction is extremely effective for students with disabilities, particularly for teaching basic skills. Direct
instruction is among the most extensively researched teaching methods and has consistently proved more effective than child-centred approaches for introducing the beginning steps of basic academic skills. Other basic principles to consider when working with children with intellectual disability include the following:
  • Do not sell the children short by expecting too little from them.
  • Provide frequent guidance and prompts to enable a child to manage the steps in a new learning task.
  • Gradually reduce the amount of guidance so that the child becomes more independent.
  • Frequently assess the learning that has taken place against the child’s objectives in the curriculum (IEP).
Useful books on intellectual disability include:
Heward, W. L. (2006). Exceptional children (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River,NJ: Merrill-Prentice Hall.
Turnbull, A., Turnbull, R., & Wehmeyer, M. L. (2007). Exceptional lives:
Special education in today’s schools (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson-Merrill-Prentice Hall.

General explanations of intellectual and developmental disability can be found online at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_disability
http://www.eumap.org/topics/inteldis/reports/summaries/uk/uk.pdf

For recommendations on teaching approaches and school provision, see:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/completed_inquiries/2002-04/ed_students_withdisabilities/submissions/sub157a.doc

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