Innovative Programs in Special Education

Innovative Programs in Special Education

Special education departments have introduced a variety of innovative programs for children with sensory impairment (deafness , hard of hearing , and blindness . There has been a good deal of success in opening access to regular school experiences to young people with sensory impairments and in educating their peers about the special concerns for children who are deaf and /or blind . There is a considerable body of evidence that innovative programs for teaching reading and spelling skills to children with disabilities should be both multi-sensory and phonic and

that this type of teaching can benefit most children in any class at most stages . These are usually programs that are highly structured . They can be seen as essentially free-standing and can form a central element of the overall strategy for teaching children with disabilities . There are many such programs , often they have a slightly different focus , with different types of materials and strategies but they all include multi-sensory element and metacognitive aspects . The range of innovative programs for children with disabilities is impressive , and this work will provide some of the various types of programs and strategies that can be used in special education

Most innovative programs incorporate some or all of the following principles and approaches : multi-sensory over-learning and automaticity highly structured and usually phonically based sequential and cumulative . Multi-sensory methods utilize all available senses simultaneously . This can be summed up in the phrase 'hear it , say it see it and write it . These methods have been used for many years and have been further refined by Hornsby and Shear (1980 ) in phonic structured programs that incorporate multi-sensory techniques Over-learning is deemed necessary for children with dyslexic difficulties . The short- and long-term memory difficulties experienced by dyslexic children mean that considerable reinforcement and repetition is necessary

The structured approaches evident in programs of work for children with disabilities usually provide a linear progression , thus enabling the learner to complete and master a particular skill in the reading or learning process before advancing to a subsequent skill . This implies that learning occurs in a linear developmental manner . Although there is evidence from learning theory to suggest this may be the case , there is still some doubt in the case of reading that mastery of the component subskills results in skilled reading . In reading , a number of cognitive skills such as memory and visual , auditory and oral skills interact This interaction is the key feature so , it is important that the skills are taught together and purposefully with the practice of reading as the focus . Sequential approaches are usually appropriate for children with dyslexia because it may be necessary for them to master subskills before moving to more advanced materials . Hence a sequential and cumulative approach may not only provide a structure to their learning but help to make learning more meaningful and effective as well

Programs based on the Orton-Gillingham approach have become a central focus for multi-sensory teaching (Hulme Joshi 1998 . The programs offer a structured , phonic-based...