How to Teach Strategies in Special Education

Teaching strategies to special education students provide them with tools they can use in every class and throughout their academic career. Many strategies are simply a way to make an assignment or task more manageable. This group of students still completes the assigned task, but they may take different steps to finish the assignment than regular students.

Instructions

1. Encourage students to carry agendas and homework planners. These tools provide students with the means of tracking their homework and responsibilities. It can also serve as a communication tool for teachers and parents.

2. Provide clarification on directions. Instruct the students to read the directions carefully and quietly to themselves if necessary. If a student is confused, have them repeat the directions to the teacher or put the directions into their own words. Provide students with examples and encourage them to use these when completing an assignment. Show students how to make the connection between examples and their own work.

3. Organize work in chunks. Teach students how to break down assignments into smaller chunks so the task is not overwhelming. By breaking the assignment into smaller tasks the work now seems manageable. This helps students concentrate on four or five problems at a time instead of 20 or 30.

4. Supply graphic organizers to arrange information. Graphic organizers focus student’s attention on the most important concepts and how these concepts relate to other concepts. If these are unavailable, have students draw pictures or create their own pictures to organize the information.

5. Teach students to take notes. These notes can be used to make note cards or some other study device for an exam. The notes can be reviewed in original form on a daily basis and before an exam. Learning how to take notes effectively teaches students to look for the most important information.

6. Search for keywords and context clues. When completing a reading assignment point out to students the title, captions and boldface words. Have students underline or highlight sentences or phrases they think are important in the reading assignment. Teach students how to write a one sentence summary of a paragraph after reading to keep track of what was read.