Common Characteristics of the Disability |
Impact on theAbility to Learn |
Summary of Best Strategies |
|
| Health Impairments | Some of the common health impairment characteristics include fatigue, mobility problems, and challenges in attentiveness, coordination challenges, muscle weakness, regular absence or lateness to school, incapability to concentrate for a longer time and stamina . | Since health impairment entails having inadequate strength, vigor or alertness or high alertness to the changes in environment, this leads to less attentiveness with in classroom/educational setting. | Application of team approach is one of the best strategies. The team comprises of parents, teachers, medical and health specialists like physical therapist. The goals to focus on include physical autonomy, self-awareness and social growth, communication, life skill training and academic growth. Next is to change the school environment and ensure it is safe, accessible and less obstructive. |
| Hearing Loss | Some of the common characteristics include bungling of speech and other sounds, challenge in understanding some words in a noisy background or group of people, difficulty in hearing consonants, regularly requesting peers to speak slowly, clearly and stridently, high tunes of radio or televisions, withdrawal from discussions and averting various social environments. | Hearing loss causes deferment in the development of receptive and expressive communication skills; language insufficiency leads to learning challenges that negatively affect academic performance; communication challenges result to social loneliness and poor self-concept; and it may also affect vocational options. Generally, such children have problem in learning new vocabularies, sentence structure, speaking, academic achievements, and social functioning. | Some of the best strategies to deal with children with hearing loss are use of captions like TV, online videos, and DVDs; applying available technology such as interactive whiteboards and sound-field amplification system; application of visual stimulus such as verbal cues and offering lesson outlines, and major points; proper classroom arrangement to ensure such children are at front column where sound is not obstructed; lastly is eliminating unnecessary noise. |
| Difficulties in Learning | Some of common characteristics of learning difficulty include short attention period; poor memory; incapability to differentiate various sounds, letters, and numerals, poor reading and writing capability; eye-contact challenges, and ineptitude and other sensory challenges | A child who has challenge in maintaining good arrangement may have problem in keeping proper order of words and letters in various class activities such as reading, spelling and writing; ensuring good order in math; and completing long tasks such as projects or term paper. Poor memory may lead to challenge in taking notes; remembering class assignments; remembering learned concept during exams; or even remembering fundamental math formulas and facts. | Some of the best strategies is the use of psycho-educational battery of formal and informal evaluation or individualized Education Program (IWF) to establish strength and weakness in relation to the intellectual capability. Also assigning the student to special teacher/tutor for some hours in a week to acquire a range of study skills, note taking and arrangement methods can be helpful. |
| Physical Disabilities | Some of the common characteristics of physical disabilities are paralysis, modified muscle tone, an unstable gait, loss or incapability to use a limb, challenge with gross-motor skills like walking or running, a challenge with fine-motor skills like buttoning clothing or writing. | Some of the impacts include inability to access learning resources; perceptual challenges like receiving information, reading and writing, speech or language problem or even challenge communicating through speech | Some of the key strategies to use while handling such student are to create an accessible learning setting; creating a flexible schedule to accommodate late or allow student leave early; use oral or presentation to administer exams; offer extra time for tests; offer digital notes; and involvement of all students in class activities. |
| Visual Impairments | Some of the common characteristics of Visual Impairments are clumsiness-children are overly clumsy; short attention span/period/ poor eye-hand coordination; poor academic performance; and crossed eyes among others. | Visual impairment impacts general structure of learning in social, motor, language, and cognitive development; reduced inspiration to explore the environment, start social connection and investigate objects. | Some strategies include promoting and supporting independence to avert learned helplessness; proper arrangement of the classroom and ensuring sight impaired students are in the front row; ensure proper lightings; use verbal cues; and providing learning resources such as textbooks and instructional materials in proper media. |
| Autism Spectrum Disorders | Some of the common characteristics of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder include difficulties with social interactions with their peers; rare interest in objects; need of repetitiveness; huge disparity in capabilities; and under or over response on the five senses namely sight, touch, tastes, smell and hearing. | Children with ASD have challenges in attention, memory, time management and emotional management. This has huge impact on learning in such areas as solving math problem due to poor organization. Also such children have problem of acknowledging others or peers’ opinion. Addition, poor joint attention make it hard to learn such skills as response, keeping in touch with topic of discussion or even interpreting facial expression | Some strategies include classroom accommodation-ensuring student seat away from the window/door, ensure they are in front desks, calm environment during examinations, and use of visual charts/color coding, and dividing long assignment into modules among others. Teachers should also start lesson using an aural cue like egg timer, outlining activities of the lesson, ensuring eye-contact, ensuring instructions are simple and clear using charts and visual aids, regular breaks, ending lesson by summarizing the major points and giving clear take home assignments. |
| Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders | Some of the common characteristics of children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders are low IQ, slow learning, poor executive function skills such as organization, reasoning and scheduling, incapability to manage money, challenge in understanding cause and effect; high sensitivity to touch, smell, light, noise and high emotions. | Due to the diverse behavioral challenges, thinking, and reasoning difficulties, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders negatively influences child’s school performance. The reason behind this is inattention, inability to critically think and reason, and hearing difficulties among others. Inability to create relation with their peers also negatively affect child’s learning | The best strategy is understanding and acknowledging that such children sustain neurological impairment because of prenatal exposure to alcohol; next is modifying the learning environment as per student’s unique needs. Developing a structured learning setting; consistent schedule; short presentations; creating a flexible schedules and promoting teamwork (parent-teacher) are essential teaching techniques strategies. |
References
Cook, R. E., Klein, M. D., Tessier, A., & Daley, S. E. (2004). Adapting early childhood curricula for children in inclusive settings.
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Allen, E. K., & Cowdery, G. E. (2014). The exceptional child: Inclusion in early childhood education . Nelson Education.
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Constable T., L., (2014). Notes on Exodus. Retrieved from http://www.planobiblechapel.org/tcon/notes/html/ot/exodus/exodus.htm
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