Teaching Special Needs

Strategies and Activities for Children in the Primary Classroom

Sylvia McNamara, Gill Blenco, Gill Moreton

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138593480
• eBook ISBN: 9780429951701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1993.This book is about teaching Children with Special Needs in mainstream primary classroom.

Normal practice was, and often still is, to remove children who find it difficult to learn in the classroom environment and teacher them in small groups elsewhere. This damages their self-esteem and impacts negatively on their ability to learn. Out premise that it is better to change the classroom so that all children can be successful learners within it. It takes the view that it is beneficial for all children to learn to be helpers of each other within the classroom and for all children to be helped.

The book offers a range of strategies including teaching the children skills for working in a pair and how to use structured group work to deliver any curriculum. This has developed into an approach called Talk for Learning which is applicable to all children and all ages of learners.

CHAPTER 1

Why Include Children with Special Needs?

In this chapter we explore:

• the rationale for integrating children with special educational needs into the mainstream primary classroom.
• the relationships between self-esteem, attribution theory, learned helplessness and children with special educational needs.
• the traditional approaches to teaching children with special needs.
• the importance of peer tutoring for integration and the curriculum.
• the role of group work for integration and teaching the National Curriculum.
• a new role for teachers in the integrated classroom.
• the process of assessment for the National Curriculum.

Integration and segregation

Since the 1981 Education Act there has been an increase in the tendency to integrate children with special needs into mainstream schools. This follows a pattern of moves towards mainstreaming in both the U.S.A. and Australia. The tendency is based on parental and societal feelings of ‘normality’, that is to say a belief that children make better progress when they feel they are the same as others rather than different. Clearly this is not straightforward because a child who is blind, deaf or who has cerebral palsy will probably look or sound different to other children. Parents, teachers and others may want to protect that child from the taunts or verbal insults of his or her peers in the mainstream setting. Additionally there may be an assumption that such children will progress better academically in a small group setting with specialists around them.

These feelings and assumptions are challenged by the view that children who go to a different school, particularly one labelled special, suffer from taunts from their peers when they do come back into contact with them. It is interesting to note that when some young boys at a residential special school in Leicester were interviewed about their feelings about being there, they said that they tell their friends they go to boarding school, and that their parents pay for them. Clearly some differences have more credibility than others!

The latter set of views is also supported by research and curriculum observations. Research demonstrates that children with special needs in both mainstream and special settings tend to have lower self-esteem than their peers with no special needs. Lund (1987) found this to be so whilst working with children in a special school for emotional and behavioural difficulties. Gray and Richer (1988) found that low self-esteem was the key reason for disruptive behaviour in mainstream schools. Gurney (1988) in his review of the research on self-esteem confirms that children with learning difficulties have a lower self-esteem than their peers. It has been found that whilst the self-esteem of pupils may increase whilst they are in the special school setting (Lewis 1971) it may even diminish when the child enters a post 16 mainstream setting.

Segregation may be seen not only as ineffective in increasing pupils’ feelings of success and ‘sameness’ but as serving to increase the differences between children with special needs and their peer group. It would appear that many young people who have spent their schooling years in special schools become so compliant and dependent upon the special treatment and regime available there that special programmes of advocacy need to be drawn up for them. Indeed one colleague in further education found he was starting advocacy work with choices of coloured felt tip pens, because the student had no experience of making a choice. Everything — clothes, food, activities — had been chosen for him in his previous special educational setting.

What is also clear is that children with special needs cannot simply be placed in a mainstream setting in the hope that the normality will rub off on them. The research evidence of Lalkhen and Norwich (1990) who conducted a small scale research project using 39 students with physical needs, showed that integration does not necessarily result in high self-esteem. It is clear then that for integration to help to move children who are special into a situation in which they become more ‘normal’ and where their self-esteem is raised, something must be done to support that happening.

The common practice in mainstream schools integrating children with special needs is to provide for and protect children’s needs by giving them special adult help. This might be an ancillary helper, a support teacher or a nursery nurse. We will argue that this does not necessarily raise children’s self-esteem in the integrated setting. It may in fact compound low self-esteem.

Young adults with special needs are beginning to speak out against the amount of intervention they receive in special school settings. It seems that the level of intervention experienced by some pupils (and adults) with special needs is felt to be unnecessarily high. Their perception is that the high levels of support appropriate for those with the most severe difficulties are commonly given to all. For some pupils this support can actively inhibit their progress. The reasons for this can be seen through studying the theories of self-esteem and learned helplessness.

Self-Esteem

It is important to note the very close correlation between a person’s self-esteem and their academic and social progress. Long-term research demonstrates that a healthy self-esteem is vitally important to the long-term development of a person throughout their life (Coopersmith 1967, Burns 1982, Hamacheck 1986). It is very important to consider this correlation when looking at a group of people who have been shown to have low self-esteem — that is, those pupils who have special educational needs. In order to help these pupils to progress academically and socially their self-esteem must be considered as influential in that process. Many writers see a connection between low self-esteem and failing (Lund 1987, Lawrence 1987, Gurney 1988, Burns 1982). The effect of failure upon self-esteem is outlined below.

Self-esteem has been defined as a personal judgement of worth, lying on a continuum which has positive at one end and negative at the other (Cottle, 1965). We have pictures of ourselves which have been described as the ideal self and the perceived self. The ideal self is the person we wish to be. This will be based upon the opinions and expectations that we have picked up from those around us. The perceived self is the picture we have of ourselves based upon the information that those around us give to us. Our self-esteem is based upon the degree of correspondence between the ideal self and the perceived self. It is our evaluation of the discrepancy between the two. If we evaluate the difference as ‘normal’, ‘close enough’, ‘nothing to worry about’ then our self-esteem is likely to be healthy. If we evaluate the difference between the ideal self and the perceived self as ‘not normal’, ‘vast’ and ‘something to worry about’ then the self-esteem will be low or unhealthy.

In his definitive sub-scales Coopersmith (1967) showed that there are different types of self-esteem and that these can be measured, which he did using a self-esteem inventory and sub-scales. He defined these as global or general, personal, social and academic. All of these can be affected by a child’s educational setting but the academic self-esteem is most pertinent here. In his review of the literature on self-esteem Burns (1982) quoted numerous studies showing a high correlation between academic self-esteem and academic success. White (1990) says that children who feel good about themselves learn more easily and retain information longer — in fact, they do better in every way. How can teachers ensure that pupils feel good about themselves academically in order to foster this healthy academic self-esteem and with it academic success? The answer must lie in ensuring that the feedback children receive promotes a belief that they are academically successful.

Academic self-esteem

The work by Lawrence, which was begun in 1973 and has been successfully repeated over the last 20 years, shows that an improvement in reading performance can be achieved through counselling (Lawrence, 1973, 1987). The level of improvement thus reached can be greater than that produced by more traditional remedial reading programmes, or the results achieved through remedial reading and counselling combined. This must cause teachers to ask how counselling could achieve results where remedial programmes fail. The research found no causal relationship between general self-esteem of pupils and their academic achievement but there was a clear relationship between academic self-esteem and academic achievement. The reason for the success of the counselling programme over more traditional methods appears to be the boost given to the subjects’ self-esteem, particularly their academic self-esteem.

For some pupils there are factors in their home environment which may affect their achievement in school. When questioned about the causes of delinquent or difficult behaviour many teachers and others say home background, social class or housing neighbourhood are to blame. This perception might well influence the academic progress of a child in school. It is true that the home background is the reason often given for poor reading skills. This might be qualified by statements about children not having enough books in the home or that there is poor reading modelling by adults. The attitude that a child shows towards school and education might also be influenced by parental experience and expectations. A ‘poor’ attitude may show itself as lack of motivation and application within school. The result of any or all of these home environment influences can be a low teacher expectation, with all the implications of the self-fulfilling prophesy (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968). A cycle of failure can soon exist for such children, as it can for children with other ‘difficulties’, whether they are social, emotional or medical in origin.

Giving positive feedback

Self-esteem theory would suggest, however, that there is a way out of this cycle of poor home background leading to school failure. Coopersmith (1967) and Whylie (1979) showed that there are three major sources of feedback for children at school and each is held to be of value. These sources are the parents, the teachers and the peers. The authors of this book believe that this is a crucially important piece of research for the reasons outlined below.

The research demonstrates the power of feedback upon the self-esteem and subsequent success of students. It suggests that if the teacher can harness their own feedback and that of students’ peers so that all students receive genuinely positive feedback in school, this can outweigh any negative feedback from home. Indeed it is our experience, through working with many teachers on small scale projects, that once the cycle of negative self-esteem (with its attached poor academic achievement and poor social and classroom behaviour) is broken, then parents start to come into school delighted with the changes in their child’s attitude to school and motivation. As a result, the parents’ own feedback may well start to change.

Children with special needs have received continuous feedback from a variety of sources that they are different. They may also have a picture of themselves as inferior, and so ‘special’ that they are in need of extra help and different provision. The authors believe that changing the feedback these pupils receive from ‘in need of special help’ to ‘we are all different but equal’ can change their perceived self. Feedback that promotes ‘different but equal’ needs to pay attention to the different strengths of each individual and show that there is real interest in everyone’s contributions and ideas. Through the acknowledgement that what they have to offer is valued in school, pupils can gradually change their self view from ‘I am a complete failure at school’ to ‘I am OK at school, although I need help sometimes with reading’.

Reading failure and low self-esteem

Lawrence’s (1973) findings showed that using a counselling skills approach with reading failure achieved great improvements in reading skills than remedial reading tuition. Many teachers may well assume that it was to do with a poor reading method. This is an understandable reaction from teachers whose job it is to support children with special needs or to teach slow readers in a withdrawal situation. Another answer seems to lie in the research on learned helplessness and attribution theory.

One of the results of having low self-esteem is a tendency to give up. The authors recognise this tendency in themselves in skill areas where they feel less confident and so low in esteem, that there is very little motivation to even try. The thought processes that operate are something like:

Oh I’m no good at this… It will never work… There’s no point in me trying because it never does work… It’s bound to end up in a mess… Everyone will be cross and disappointed… I’ll feel bad about it… So I’ll get someone else to do it… It will be quicker.. Everyone will be happy.

Children do not come in to primary school with low academic self esteem. Until coming to school there has been little or no chance for them to compare academic performance with their peers and they have encountered few whom they see as knowing about their academic performance. They form a picture of themselves based on the feedback they get from teachers and peers about what happens in school. One major event in school, and one that pervades all other activities, is the business of learning to read and write. If a child does not make quick progress with reading. Children look around and begin to see that reading is not just one subject like art or playing in the water; they accurately make an assessment of themselves and see that failure in reading means failure in all academic subjects. This is because all the other subjects are delivered through reading and writing. This tendency to deliver through reading and writing starts very early and is firmly established by year three. It increases through the years until secondary school where the diet can be up to 90 per cent reading and writing.

Chapman, Lambourne and Silva (1990) showed that children’s reading ability correlated to their self-esteem. This correlation indicates that children are receiving strong messages about the importance of reading as a fundamental skill and one which is central to their future academic achievement.

We have noticed the tendency to deliver the curriculum of history, geography and science through reading and writing. This has been even more noticeable since the National Curriculum was introduced, as a way of coping with the vastly increased workload of teachers and children in primary schools.

Many teachers at this point say, ‘Well, that is how it is, we have to teach them to read because it is a life skill’. Whilst the authors of this book do whole-heartedly and actively work for fluent literacy for all, we feel that the way reading and writing is used as a medium of instruction for all other subjects is totally disproportionate to the communication skills required and utilised by industry and in wider society. There is little evidence that reading and writing are the most commonly used communication skills once children leave school. There is evidence that it is the spoken word that is used more often.

What we have found, through our own work with children and through working with teachers on similar projects, is that it is the very emphasis on reading skills that holds children up in their academic pro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Why Include Children With Special Needs?
• 2 Changes in Teaching Style
• 3 Skills Training and the Curriculum
• 4 Non-verbal Communication
• 5 Initial Verbal Skills
• 6 Types of Talk
• 7 Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties
• 8 Helping and Children With Special Needs
• Conclusion
• Bibliography