Learner Development and Field Experience

By recognizing development and learning patterns that differ independently across and within the emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and linguistic areas, the teacher can better understand the growth and progress of students with disabilities. To accomplish the aforementioned objective, it is crucial to plan and carry out demanding and developmentally appropriate learning activities, in my experience as a tutor. For instance, the goal of cognitive scaffolding is to help language-impaired learners recognize the initial stage in the learning process. The purpose of scaffolding, on the other hand, is to remove any obstacles that can impede pupils from getting it correctly or from comprehending the proper significance of correspondence in learning. Therefore, teachers are required to remove scaffolding progressively in ensuring that a student with language disability can learn how to become independent and self-regulated in the process of learning. The paper discusses how to modify instructions by making them more challenging, relevant, and accessible for learners with language disability in K-8 and 9-12 grade levels. Also discussed are learning needs for students with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and those learners having atypical language development in both educational and non-educational setting.

Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a condition that makes it difficult for learners to comprehend what they hear, thus making learning and functioning of such kids in the classroom to be hard. By reflecting on my field of experience as a teacher, the following accommodations can help learners with auditory processing disorder (Van der Schuit et al., 2011). Concerning a student in grades level of K–12, proper priming will provide excellent K–8 content comprehension based on the learner’s performance and 9-12 classes for high school students. For In-Class Learning, repetition or rephrase of essential information is significant and is something that a teacher needs to consider throughout the lesson to make APD learners understand. Besides, presentation of information needs to be slow and precise. The teacher should use visual tools such as computer or white boards, images, and gesticulations to support vocal lessons and enhance the understanding of the learner.

Respect to Classwork and Test Taking, APD learner should be provided with a silent area for individual work, also provide opportunities for such a student to use and demonstrate his strengths in class (Aguiar et al., 2010). Organize a classmate to share notes with such learner and break down the course work instructions to comprehensible steps to make understanding easy. The teacher must guarantee to work with communities, colleagues, other pupils, colleagues, and families to create supportive and positive learning environments for an APD learner. Besides, there is no need of penalizing such a student for spelling mistakes and should be given a lengthy time for testing. About class preparations, a teacher has a responsibility of making sure that the learner read and become conversant with the learning resources before it is educated in class. For future lessons, a list of key concepts and vocabulary should be provided to such a learner to prepare his cognizance.

Moreover, it is noteworthy to point out that a student with language disability and varied learning needs, a contextual knowledge in instructing is key to success as it addresses the approach and memory deficits such student bring to particular, tasks. In effect, instructing or priming is a brief reminder that signals the student to work scopes or to regain acknowledged information. Instructional materials can recognize the significance of background information in in various ways. One of them is where a learner can be pretested for essential background knowledge. Such tests are vital in determining the assignment of an apprentice in an instructional program (Aguiar et al., 2010). It is suitable for assessing student’s contextual knowledge with learning problems using formats apart from writing and reading as such a learner often understand more than he can express through writing and reading.

Concerning student with atypical language development and APD difficulties, it is also good to reduce visual and auditory disruptions in the tutorial room to make learning instructions comprehensible. Visual mess and in-essential noises and visual inhibit the learner’s capability to follow directions, instructions and identify relevant information to attend to during the learning process. Prepare students to know when it is time for listening. Prompt them, for example, provide a verbal cue, call on their name, and inspire them to maintain a direct eye contact with you (Van der Schuit et al., 2011). For learners in demographic grades K–12, proper priming will provide the suitable K–8 understanding of content basing on the allotted level and the student’s performance as well as the high school learners in their 9-12 grade levels. Lastly, is also important to give such student a nonverbal gesture, for example, point to your ear. Make simple and short directions and use of visuals when giving instructions.

References

Aguiar, C., Moiteiro, A. R., & Pimentel, J. S. (2010). Classroom-Quality and Social Acceptance of Preschoolers with Disabilities. Infants and Young Children, 23(1), 34-41.

Van der Schuit, M., Segers, E., van Balkom, H., & Verhoeven, L. (2011). Early Language Intervention for Children with Intellectual Disabilities: A Neurocognitive Perspective. Research in Developmental Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 32(2), 705-712.