Special Education Tips: 5 Ways To Bring Out The Best In Students With Special Needs

Providing effective and proper education to students is a challenging task. It is an even more challenging task to provide special education to students with special needs. 

Therefore, it is important for both parents and teachers to know the best ways to teach students with special needs.

Teacher Vision shared some practical and useful special education tips. Hopefully, these tips can help parents and teachers bring out the best in students with special needs.

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1. Catering To Special Needs

All students are different from each other. They have different personalities, interests and learning styles.

For this reason, one of the most important special education tips is for teachers to thoroughly individualize their teaching styles in order to cater to the special needs of their students. Giving special visual aids to students with hearing problems or giving oral tests to students with writing problems are examples of individualized teaching plans.

2. Frequent Progress Reports

"Provide learning disabled students with frequent progress checks," Teacher Vision advises. "Let them know how well they are progressing toward an individual or class goal."

An effective way to do this is by giving immediate feedbacks to students with special needs as well as to their parents or guardians. Teachers should always practice constructive criticism every time they point out the negative aspects of their feedback.

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3. Make It Short And Simple

One of the most important special education tips is to make your lessons, lectures and class activities short and simple. Long and drawn-out activities can be frustrating to students with special needs. Keep in mind that they might also have a hard time understanding abstract concepts and lessons so you have to teach them as simple as possible.

4. Give Specific Praise

Many students with special needs are motivated to work harder when they receive praises for their good behavior and successful tasks. Just make sure to give specific praises to help them understand what made them deserving of the praise they are receiving.

5. Let Them Join Other Students For Activities

"The hardest thing, as a parent, was last year coming to the school and coming in to visit my daughter during lunch," Josh Renken, a father of a child with special needs shared with Illinois Public Radio. "And seeing this whole table of children separated on the edge of the cafeteria, all of whom have varying disabilities." 

One of the most essential special education tips is to let students with special needs join other students for different activities and not treating them as outcasts. It's not about making them feel special, but letting the feel normal.