Adapting an activity for children with any type of special needs?

Question

my assignment is too adapt a classroom activity for a child with special needs. Specify the developmental objective of the activity, the type of disability for which you are accommodating the activity and how the activity will be adapted to make it accessible to the child's developmental needs.

I want and need some ideas or topics for preschool age children on what I could do to help me get started on it

Answer 1

I can't gather from your question exactly what type of disability you're going for here, but I can share my own experiences as the only blind child in an entirely sighted pre-school.

Developmentally, the objectives for me were the same as they were for everyone else. My disability was not mental, and it was important that despite it I remain at or above an age-appropriate level.

The adaptations I remember being made (and have been reminded about by parents, old letters from teachers, and old videos of school events) were pretty simple really. Whenever the teacher was demonstrating movements for a song or fingerplay she would always say what she was doing out loud in detail. "When we sing "down came the rain and washed the spider out" we hold our hands up and wiggle our fingers as we bring them down in front of us like rain falling" or something to that affect. The same description took place when giving instructions for arts and crafts, and in those cases I got to feel or look very closely at as much as possible. They also had me use a glue stick instead of glue bottle, as this made directing where the glue went a lot easier. When I did need to use a glue bottle they gave me bright pink or orange colored glue, so that I could see it on white paper. Before snack time we would all be sitting around the snack table and each student would be shown a letter that they had to identify before going and getting their snack. WHen it was my turn, they would either show me the letter very very close, or tell me "This letter is the first letter in Banana" or "This letter comes after N"... This was long before i started learning braille, or else i imagine that would have been implemented. I hope some of this helps.

Answer 2

Classroom Situation:  You have 12 children ages 3-5.  6 are typically developing children and 6 are on an IEP(several are non verbal).  The focus of this lesson is developing knowledge of our themed vocabulary.  It is circle time and you are selecting children to identify either expressively or receptively what the vocabulary word is.

For the verbal children and typically developing children you may ask the child:

  What is this a picture of?

  Can you tell me something about it?

For a non-verbal child:  You may lay out a field of 1-4 cards depending upon the age and level at which the child functions.

   You would then instruct the child to:

Touch the "plane" or whatever the vocabulary word is.

Touch the one that "flies in the sky" or whatever applies

I would then help them sign the appropriate vocabulary word or even attempt at making the "p" sound or saying the word depending upon the childs ability.

I hope this helps with your assignment.  I use this quite often in my class and the children really seem to understand and participate!

Answer 3

hey dont mind helping but you need to do some of the work yourself...or you wont ever learn....choose a topic, and the objective.....the most often seen special need in the preschool room is centered around behavior issues(add, adhd) or some form of physical limitation(cerebal pasly)...once you are at least looking like you are trying more people will be willing to help

Answer 4

Two of the easiest adaptaions are providing extended wait time (giving children extra time to think and respond) as well as providing the material in multiple modes. So instead of just telling the students aboutr something tell them, show them, act it out with them....also give them other ways besides just speaking to show you back what they have learned. I know this is not very specific but that would take a long while hope this is a jumping off spot for you.