Module 20 – Teaching Approaches and Strategies
Duration: Approx 25 minutes
Student Objectives:
· To identify approaches and strategies for communication and interaction
· To identify approaches and strategies for students with cognition and learning needs
· To identify approaches and strategies for students with social, emotional or mental health needs (SEMH)
· To identify approaches and strategies for students with physical and sensory disabilities
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20.1 Introduction
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In previous modules, you learnt about the different disabilities and issues teachers may encounter in any classroom setting.
Although differentiation is the responsibility of every teacher, rather than planning for teaching a student with a specific disability, it is important to learn about general teaching strategies that make learning accessible to a wide range of students with special educational needs.
In this module, you will learn about many different strategies and approaches for helping pupils with a variety of support needs. With this foundation of knowledge, you will be able to tell when to apply these strategies in the classroom and learn how to personalise these strategies to support individual pupils.
20.2 Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Communication and Interaction
Several strategies and approaches can serve as good practice when teaching and interacting with pupils with communication difficulties.
The primary approach in this area should include the early identification of pupils with communication needs followed by early intervention. This approach is important for creating successful teaching strategies, although reality may dictate that students did not receive the benefit of early intervention before joining your classroom.
Another important approach is the involvement of the pupils’ families in the identification and intervention practices. You have an obligation to share information about support needs and strategies with the parents involved.
The involvement should include a collaborative partnership that generates an exchange useful to both parties and therefore to the individual child. When this relationship is established, more information can be gathered and put to good use supporting pupils and their families.
The experience should always be a collaborative one, and collaboration should always happen with the child at the centre. Every child has different communication and interaction difficulties, particularly when these difficulties stem from physical or sensory issues such as deafness or blindness. It is especially important for the child to be in control of how they can communicate so that they are given time to process a new school system and setting.
When possible and where relevant, teaching strategies in this area should include visual reinforcements in the classroom. Visual reinforcements supplement verbal instructions both during instruction and during break time.
For example
Teachers should not just list the classroom rules orally at the start of class. Keeping a list of written instructions is just as important to refer to for both the pupil and the teacher. Even better practice is a list of positive behaviours (rather than rules) that is agreed by the whole class and made available for reference.
Visual information should not be limited to text. Teachers should also include pictures and animations to help support their instructions when possible.
For example
A picture of a cartoon bear or illustrated child performing acceptable classroom behaviour will help reinforce understanding for pupils with communication difficulties.
The majority of specialist provisions will use a particular type of symbol system to reinforce visual instruction. Systems such as Boardmaker, Symbolstix or Widget are simple visuals that create uniformity and reduce the ambiguity of some visuals.
For blind or partially sighted students, there is braille and computer programs such as screen readers that can help. For deaf children, visual stimuli become essential, and information exchanged through signing should be reinforced in visual form.
Research has shown that teaching strategies should also place a greater emphasis on the cognitive process of language, including structure and the use of input and output in language.
20.3 Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Cognition and Learning
There are several strategies and approaches for cognition and learning that can be broken into different categories, including reading, metacognitive, inclusion, and home interventions.
Reading
Teaching SEN pupils to read with approaches specifically designed to support cognition and learning requires in-depth, comprehensive and explicit teaching of all the aspects of reading including semantics, syntax and phonology.
These methods will explain why and where parts of speech are used, why things are spelt the way they are and why the organisation of text affects meaning by occurring the way it does. This will foster a deeper understanding by guiding your pupils to draw conclusions themselves based on the rules of language.
This type of teaching is useful for mainstream pupils as well and should be differentiated according to the students’ literacy levels. For pupils who are beginner readers or who are trying to catch up with their peers, teachers should be providing cumulative and repetitive literacy teaching to help them reach their lesson objectives.
It should be noted that this teaching takes more time than mainstream lesson plans may necessarily offer, even with differentiation. Beginner readers will need specific teaching of phonics and morphology in order to understand language and how it is structured.
Often, using a multisensory, structured, in-depth phonics or morphology approach with consistent reinforcement is essential for teaching reading in the SEN context. There is little evidence that suggests that pupils with learning or cognitive difficulties require teaching practices that are altogether distinctive from those used in mainstream classrooms, although there will be greater emphasis on multisensory and kinaesthetic teaching.
Indeed, it is thought by SpLD/dyslexia specialists that those teaching strategies that benefit dyslexic students benefit all students. However, teachers should not disregard different approaches entirely. There are still individual differences between pupils that will impact how differentiation is applied, depending not only on needs but also on interests, learning styles, levels of language and communication skills.
Teaching reading requires careful and ongoing assessment. This includes formative and cumulative assessments made at regular intervals. These assessments are required so that teachers can monitor progress and adapt the programme as required.
Metacognitive
Metacognitive strategies involve the students’ participation and understanding of how they learn and the ways which help them learn best. In recent years, these have become more and more prominent in successful teaching.
Pupils with cognitive and learning difficulties may struggle primarily with grasping organisational and abstract concepts. Teachers can support pupils with these difficulties by using different procedural facilitators in the classroom. Some of these facilitators include writing frames, planning sheets, and story mapping. These are known as scaffolds which promote Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, mentioned earlier in this course. The idea is to reduce these scaffolds over a period of time, all the while working just above the young person’s cognitive ability.
Using these tools in the classroom allows teachers to help pupils present information in a way that may be easier to understand. It also allows them to participate in the organisation of this information which helps encourage deeper learning and the development of cognitive skills.
Teaching generic thinking (metacognitive) skills is also useful in the classroom. Teachers sometimes move away from pure literacy skills and instead include thinking, talking and listening.
Inclusion and Access to Learning
As highlighted in previous modules, including pupils in the classroom and ensuring access to learning is an important part of the SEN programme and of teaching in general. There are a few strategies that teachers can use to help facilitate inclusion and access within their classrooms.
Teachers can use strategies that include collaborative team planning. This kind of planning will provide opportunities for pupils to take part in activities on a smaller scale when they are not suited to working within the whole class or individual learning context. These teams also facilitate peer teaching which means that pupils may find new perspectives helpful for learning.
However, it is important to note that while cooperative group learning has a positive impact on the class as a whole, the results for SEN pupils can be mixed.
It is important to avoid over-reliance on peer teaching.
It can help a mainstream student understand a subject more fully when explaining it to another student. However, in some cases, it can put undue pressure on a student with special educational needs.
The dynamics of the classroom must be considered and students need to be carefully allocated into groups rather than choose groups to work in. It is also important not to place SEN pupils with more significant needs in the same group every time the method is used.
If the ethos of the school and classroom is truly inclusive, all students involved will see the benefits of peer teaching when this is done on a small scale and used alongside other teaching and learning strategies.
Access to learning can also be hindered by the environment. Teachers can manipulate the organisational and physical features of the classroom to help include pupils. Simple things like keeping the classroom clean, keeping things organised and minimising visual and auditory distractions can make a significant difference for SEN pupils.
For example
A teacher might set up displays at the back of the classroom rather than at the front or the sides. Thus, pupils will need to turn around in their seats to be distracted by displays and their distraction will be immediately obvious to the teacher.
It is also important to balance long-term and short-term goals when it comes to cognition. Teachers often find that these goals can compete with each other, thus, striking the right balance requires time, compromise, and working individually with the pupil.
Home Interventions
Home interventions are useful in learning and cognition. The primary intervention noted here is the promotion of family literacy. Studies have shown that promoting family literacy is very helpful for literacy in the classroom.
20.4 Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs (SEMH)
Pupils with social, emotional or mental health needs tend to have difficulties in the classroom for two reasons.
The first is that these difficulties prevent them from actively participating in the classroom in a meaningful way, especially when they are unsupported. The second is that they can be alienated from their peers who, when left to their own devices, may find them difficult or hard to relate to.
Supporting Inclusion
Teachers can support inclusion by using the appropriate strategies to involve the pupils in the classroom. They serve as role models for SEN pupils and mainstream pupils in regard to behaviour and communication.
However, developing the whole group of peers is an important part of the SEN programme. Peer-oriented activities like monitoring and intervention are useful in the classroom because they encourage social skills across the board. Most importantly, they reduce the level of peer rejection that may hinder the inclusion of SEN pupils in classroom activities.
In addition to peer-related approaches, teachers can also apply cognitive-behavioural approaches in the classroom. These approaches serve to encourage pupils to regulate their behaviour on their own. It teaches them to take responsibility for themselves, their feelings and their actions. By extension, this encourages pupils with behavioural difficulties to gather an acute sense of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. It also promotes positive self-reinforcement, self-instruction, and self-monitoring.
These strategies often serve to reduce the amount of anti-social behaviour in the classroom and instead promote positive and on-task behaviours. Ultimately, this rules out some behavioural issues before they begin.
Anger Management
Anger management strategies are an important tool when used within the cognitive-behaviour approach. This approach requires two steps. First, there must be a strategy to decrease the physiological symptoms that come with anger using relaxation techniques, for example, Mindfulness. This technique teaches a person to relax by living in the moment and viewing all the positive aspects of their environment. Second, it must be cognitive in that it teaches pupils how to change or restructure the way they think.
Learning how to decrease the physiological symptoms of anger is an important skill for teachers, school managers and counsellors. This is typically done through relaxation training. Relaxation training involves the adult working with the pupil to understand the triggers that led to their anger and showing them that while they cannot control some triggers, they can control how they respond to those triggers. Thus, pupils learn that they do not need to react just because they feel angry.
Teachers then walk pupils through tracking their thoughts to become more aware of their triggers. One way to do this is to encourage pupils to replace their angry thoughts with calming thoughts, thus replacing anger with relaxed thoughts.
Teachers can work with pupils to help them come up with some calming thoughts and encourage them to write them down on cue cards. Alternative behaviours or calming strategies can also be written down on these cards.
Teaching this method to pupils is best done through one-to-one role play. It can also be taught through worksheets where pupils fill in triggers, observe what happens and identify the angry thoughts they might have. Behaviour diaries are useful in older pupils.
Other Approaches
Some research suggests that using positive reinforcement strategies and behaviour reduction strategies are useful for moderating the behaviour in pupils of all ages.
Other research suggests that using a combination of approaches works best; however, it is not totally clear how different approaches interact with each other. These approaches would also have to differ depending on the individual pupil’s needs.
Research also suggests that parents must be involved in the child’s education as active partners, thereby presenting a unified front for the child and providing the child with a sense of empowerment.
Creating opportunities for sharing interventions, strategies and information with parents, and teaching them how to use these at home is vital for success in the classroom.
Some studies have shown that parental training programmes produce more results than child-only approaches. These programmes tend to prevent the internalisation and externalisation of behaviour in both the short term and the long term. Ultimately, when a child knows what is expected of them in all contexts, it is easier for them to distinguish between inappropriate and appropriate behaviours.
20.5 Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Sensory and Physical Disabilities
One of the most important approaches in relation to sensory and physical disabilities is to provide the pupils with developmental opportunities.
Social interaction is incredibly important for pupils. Disabilities may cause the pupil to feel alienated from peers and occasionally by their peers. This can be very detrimental to learning and self-esteem. Thus, teachers must work on promoting social interaction in the pupils’ local environment.
Teachers can encourage pupils by using a structured approach when reinforcing a systematic procedure. The greater the structure in pupils’ lives, the easier it is to support them in simple and complex tasks. However, this structure should not prevent a child from seeking independence. Rather, it should serve to provide a safety net when the child needs it.
It is also important to adapt the environment to the pupils’ needs in order to promote access to learning and encourage their participation in their own learning. Keeping the classroom clean and organised is often a good place to start. However, other adaptations may be made regarding lighting, sound and pupil seating plans.
Use of Technology
Teachers can include the use of technology as an approach to promoting learning and inclusion for pupils with physical disabilities. Many popular educational and practical software applications have distinct settings available for pupils with hearing, sight and other physical disabilities.
Electronic tablets can be used to support learning and as a way of inclusive communication.
Social Interaction and Access to Environment
Teachers can use specific methods for promoting social interaction for pupils with sensory and physical disabilities. Active learning methods are often useful for promoting behavioural and social development.
It is important for teachers to create an atmosphere that encourages and promotes inclusion. This atmosphere again focuses on the child’s abilities, rather than their disabilities, and allows them to participate normally in as many practices as possible.
Pupils may use certain tools or adaptations to approach activities, but it is important for these tools to be normalised in the classroom. This kind of atmosphere will encourage academic, cognitive, emotional and social growth both in pupils with disabilities and mainstream pupils.
Research shows that it is useful to promote objects of reference for pupils. Research also shows that deaf pupils also benefit from cued speech and are more likely to be able to regularly use phonological coding with greater exposure. Further studies suggest that pupils with physical disabilities benefit from being able to learn through both cognitive interactions and physical movements and interactions.
Developing Independence
Teaching independence to pupils with disabilities also begins in the classroom. Independence helps prepare pupils for life in and out of school. Some of the earlier strategies are useful for promoting independence. However, there are other ways that pupils can learn the skills and tools of independence.
Extracurricular activities are often useful for pupils to gain the self-confidence they need to work independently. Deaf children in particular tend to develop well when they are able to take part in after-school or extracurricular activities. It is also important for hearing students to understand the needs of their deaf peers. A good way to do this would be to introduce children to British Sign Language (BSL) so that they can learn the alphabet and a few keywords to use with their peers.
Communication strategies can also be promoted in the classroom. Children tend to benefit from strategies that include alternative and augmentative communication because they allow pupils to communicate in an appropriate way that makes sense to them and helps them express themselves.
Teachers can also help pupils develop personal agency, which supports their independence. Personal agency refers to an individual’s ability to make intentional and meaningful choices and to take actions that can influence their own life and circumstances. It is the sense of being in control of one’s own thoughts, behaviours, and decisions, and feeling empowered to create and pursue goals and objectives.
The theme that runs through these approaches to independence is choice. Rather than focusing on a pupil’s difficulties, teachers can focus on their abilities and, thus, allow them to choose how they want to learn, move and communicate. This gives them greater agency to make confident choices in the future.
Conclusion
These are just some of the basic teaching approaches and strategies that can be used in the wider classroom. It is important to remember that these approaches should not be applied wholesale to pupils or classrooms. Rather, they should follow the graduated approach and protocol promoted by the schools’ SEN programmes.
It is important to ensure that these approaches are personalised for the individual pupil as well. When you can successfully deploy the right strategy to the right pupil at the right time, teachers have a much greater chance of success in supporting pupils of all abilities in the classroom and in life.
In the next module, we discuss educational outcomes.
WELL DONE!
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