Children who are born without hearing or those who lost hearing in early childhood due to illness cannot develop their language skills without help. Remember there are many children out there who can hear ,but they are unable to express themselves without help and training. The implications to the teacher is to help these children to develop their language skills. Children who are hardly to hear are known as deaf while those with difficulties in speaking are called dumb. In most cases children who has problems in hearing also has problems in speech. These disabilities usually go hand in glove . Both these handicapped children need to be taught to communicate effectively.
Communication is done in various types such as speech ,expressions on our faces ,movements of our arms and body ,signals with our hands and fingers ,writing ,reading and use of pictures. We can use communication styles to express ourselves to others and to understand others.
A child with hearing and speech problems often feels cut off from other children and feels lonely because they cannot communicate. Teachers ,pupils and volunteers should learn simple ways of communicating with these children. We should call these children by their names when speaking to them . These children will know that we are speaking to them. We must always start only when the child is looking at us.
Some children has little hearing,as teachers should encourage them to use it so that the children can develop it.The little hearing can be stimulated by activities such as listening exercises. The children are involved in environmental noises which produced by cars,lorries ,tractors ,motorbikes ,aeroplanes ,dogs,cats ,drums ,guitars etc. These noises then associated with pictures or written words to enable the pupils to distinguish and discriminate against incorrect responses.Listening skills can be used to explain the differences between words with similar sounds such as 'bird and bed', 'beat and bead' ,'road and rod ' or 'meat and meet'.
Language can be fully enriched by describing activities such as cooking ,gardening ,playing soccer or netball used on its particular place. For instance dribbling the ball in soccer. Describing should takes place only when the children are involved in the exercises. This help the children involved in the learning to effectively learn from direct experience.Take a situation when the teacher walks into the classroom and finds pupils fighting ,this is a good opportunity to teach words like fighting ,bad,good ,trouble and extend to teach morals.
The use of short sentences directly related to the activity and those pupils with hearing problems must imitates speech and this helps much in learning.It is necessary not to press the child if cannot pronounce words correctly.It is always necessary to speak normally as to help children to imitate and also speak normally. When speaking it is good to use gestures to make clear clarifications to those listening what we are really saying, such as make use of head shaking when we say NO!,pointing at them when saying YOU! and pointing at ourselves when saying I or ME!.
It is nice to note that facial expressions should also change with what we want to
say.Our faces can show happiness,sorrow,surprise,depression ,smelling etc. The frequent use of these expressions is essential whenever we are in contact with
pupils. The children later will make use of these expressions through our stimulus and motivates them to use these movements and expressions to express themselves in thoughts ,feelings and needs.
Helping Mentally Retarded Children: A child who is mentally retarded behaves strangely because the mind do not work normally. This child doesn't understand what is happening to him/her. He/she is operating unconsiously as behaving and does not realise the effects of the illness on his/her behaviour and on other people.
These children with mental problems need the help of those normal people with whom they live with .The teacher must understand a person who shows strange behaviour and make efforts to help. The mental development of a person with mental problems takes place more slowly than his physical chronological development. A person who is chronological 15 years older may behave like a three year old child. For us to be able to help them and accept them as they are.
02 October 2010
Fits as a Disability in Children and ways to Help them
The familisation study is essential as it shall help us in situations do arise in schools where we suddenly find ourselves facing the fits problems for child development .There is need to understand and deal with such problems.
The main purpose of having knowledge of fits troubled children is that it exposed us to early stages of learning and effective methods of teaching, even in normal children.The provision of learning opportunities through use of some methods of teaching in classroom situation help our learners to learn effectively and teachers to teacher efficiently. There is evidence that all pupils can enjoy learning if situations are carefully planned and if different professional skills like teaching methods of instruction,social perspectives and cognitive development are properly linked and organised in such a way that it create a hormony for stimulating learning conducive environment.
Teachers are influential people in the communities where the children reside. Many community members listen to teachers' advices. Therefore teachers can also teach the community on how to cope with fits and some of the problems arising from this form retardation.
Helping Children with Fits:
If a child falls on the ground because of fits ,we must let the fits run its course and then offer our help later by observing the following points:
♥We must be calm and tell others nearby not to be frightened.We must keep the child on the spot unless the spot is a dangerous like traffic way,near fire ,water or other dangerous position to threaten the health of the victim.
♥We must then fold a cloth and put it under the child's head.The tight clothing must be loosened when the victim is wearing it.When the unusual movement has stopped we must turn the child onto the side so that the tongue falls forward . Any saliva will pour out of the mouth enabling the child to breathe easily,we must stay close together with the child for quite some time after the fits is over to comfort the victim and explain what happens to him/her ,but not frightened or disheartened the child, if the child injured during fits ,we must clean the wound with soapy water and cover them with clean cloth. If appropriate medicine is available we can apply on the wound .This is possible with small wounds .Severe wounds ,burns and deep injuries we should refer children to the nearest clinic or hospital,the child usually becomes tired after the fits and may need to sleep for some time ,so we should give him/her a rest.
The main purpose of having knowledge of fits troubled children is that it exposed us to early stages of learning and effective methods of teaching, even in normal children.The provision of learning opportunities through use of some methods of teaching in classroom situation help our learners to learn effectively and teachers to teacher efficiently. There is evidence that all pupils can enjoy learning if situations are carefully planned and if different professional skills like teaching methods of instruction,social perspectives and cognitive development are properly linked and organised in such a way that it create a hormony for stimulating learning conducive environment.
Teachers are influential people in the communities where the children reside. Many community members listen to teachers' advices. Therefore teachers can also teach the community on how to cope with fits and some of the problems arising from this form retardation.
Helping Children with Fits:
If a child falls on the ground because of fits ,we must let the fits run its course and then offer our help later by observing the following points:
♥We must be calm and tell others nearby not to be frightened.We must keep the child on the spot unless the spot is a dangerous like traffic way,near fire ,water or other dangerous position to threaten the health of the victim.
♥We must then fold a cloth and put it under the child's head.The tight clothing must be loosened when the victim is wearing it.When the unusual movement has stopped we must turn the child onto the side so that the tongue falls forward . Any saliva will pour out of the mouth enabling the child to breathe easily,we must stay close together with the child for quite some time after the fits is over to comfort the victim and explain what happens to him/her ,but not frightened or disheartened the child, if the child injured during fits ,we must clean the wound with soapy water and cover them with clean cloth. If appropriate medicine is available we can apply on the wound .This is possible with small wounds .Severe wounds ,burns and deep injuries we should refer children to the nearest clinic or hospital,the child usually becomes tired after the fits and may need to sleep for some time ,so we should give him/her a rest.
The special children needs children in the primary school education system
It is necessary for teachers to understand and appreciate the possible needs of special children because they are going to meet them or have already done so in the classroom.This article will enable us in a number of ways to deal with different forms of disability ,their causes and possible ways of helping the special needs children.
Teachers should be able to identify and explain what are regarded as special needs children .You should also note that fast learners can be regarded as special needs children.
We usually get worried when some of our pupils are not able to perform some tasks set for them. In levels of child development we expect children to do particular tasks successfully.In mathematics for example ,we expect a child in 5th or 6th year of formal primary education to be able to do Addition,Subtraction,Division and Multiplication.If
the child fails to do these mathematical operations we then conclude that the child has special problems which needs special attention.
The problems of a child who lags behind in basic conceptual development and general academic performance is one of the difficult problems we have to face.These children may be retarded in their development or may be affected by social backgrounds,which can be sour family relations or poverty.
These problems are because of the physical or social problems resulted in persistent failure to achieve what the other children can achieve.The permanent failure causes the child to be worried of life ,hate education and the society in general.
Even a fast learner who excel in class activities than the average learners is a special child.Therefore it is necessary to know these special children so that no pupil will be disadvantaged in the learning situation.
Types of Disability and their Natural Causes
There are many natural causes of disabilities in children and the effects on the their education capabilities.Lets discuss the following:
Physical handicaps
Emotional handicaps
Severe subnormality
Mental handicaps
Educational Subnormality(ESN)
Physically Handcapped Children
Physically handicapped children are those children who are:
Blind and Partially (blind) sighted.
Deaf and partially (deaf)hearing.
Physically handicapped and delicate.
The blind and partially sighted have problems of seeing objects.The blind children cannot see anything completely .But the partially sighted can see things very faintly.These people need special teaching methods .The problems arising from partial seeing are difficult to detect.Some children became blind in their mother's womb .
Generally 60% of the cases of blindness are caused by genetic factors.Infections account for 15%,injury and accidents for 15% while diseases account for 10%.Fries in Africa for example carry a disease called onchocerciasis especially in hot areas and can cause blindness.
Ignorance and poverty can lead to some cases of blindness in children because of poor sanitation and hygiene practices .Some mothers don't wash their children's faces results in these children lost sight.This is because the eyes secrete mucus which can attracts flies and then left germs which in turn cause blindness.
Because of religious beliefs some parents don't go to the medical centres for treatments or to take advice from this health experts because of their church doctrines,for example apostolic sects in African societies never go to hospitals.Most of children lost their sight simply by not practicing proper hygienic standards in their homes.
Teachers should be able to identify and explain what are regarded as special needs children .You should also note that fast learners can be regarded as special needs children.
We usually get worried when some of our pupils are not able to perform some tasks set for them. In levels of child development we expect children to do particular tasks successfully.In mathematics for example ,we expect a child in 5th or 6th year of formal primary education to be able to do Addition,Subtraction,Division and Multiplication.If
the child fails to do these mathematical operations we then conclude that the child has special problems which needs special attention.
The problems of a child who lags behind in basic conceptual development and general academic performance is one of the difficult problems we have to face.These children may be retarded in their development or may be affected by social backgrounds,which can be sour family relations or poverty.
These problems are because of the physical or social problems resulted in persistent failure to achieve what the other children can achieve.The permanent failure causes the child to be worried of life ,hate education and the society in general.
Even a fast learner who excel in class activities than the average learners is a special child.Therefore it is necessary to know these special children so that no pupil will be disadvantaged in the learning situation.
Types of Disability and their Natural Causes
There are many natural causes of disabilities in children and the effects on the their education capabilities.Lets discuss the following:
Physical handicaps
Emotional handicaps
Severe subnormality
Mental handicaps
Educational Subnormality(ESN)
Physically Handcapped Children
Physically handicapped children are those children who are:
Blind and Partially (blind) sighted.
Deaf and partially (deaf)hearing.
Physically handicapped and delicate.
The blind and partially sighted have problems of seeing objects.The blind children cannot see anything completely .But the partially sighted can see things very faintly.These people need special teaching methods .The problems arising from partial seeing are difficult to detect.Some children became blind in their mother's womb .
Generally 60% of the cases of blindness are caused by genetic factors.Infections account for 15%,injury and accidents for 15% while diseases account for 10%.Fries in Africa for example carry a disease called onchocerciasis especially in hot areas and can cause blindness.
Ignorance and poverty can lead to some cases of blindness in children because of poor sanitation and hygiene practices .Some mothers don't wash their children's faces results in these children lost sight.This is because the eyes secrete mucus which can attracts flies and then left germs which in turn cause blindness.
Because of religious beliefs some parents don't go to the medical centres for treatments or to take advice from this health experts because of their church doctrines,for example apostolic sects in African societies never go to hospitals.Most of children lost their sight simply by not practicing proper hygienic standards in their homes.
01 October 2010
EDUCATION FOR LIBERATION TO LEARN FROM CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Christians in their congregation they heard their preachers when preaching they oftenly repeat the words of Jesus Christ in the John's gospels which says: ''You shall know the truth ,the truth shall make you free and you shall be free indeed''.
Like the purpose of religion to give the truth of the spiritual world ,Education is also the light of the society from one generation to another.
A society which invests in Education of its citizens ,especially children is really sanctify its prosperous future.
Education by vitue of its enlightment ,is the holistic process by which one generation transmits its known knowledge and cultural activities to the succeeding generations or the system by which individual aspirations and vision are reviewed to findout how effectively they can be responsible in their society. The trationalists regards Education as preparation for life ,whilst pragmatists argued that Education is life itself through participation in various spheres of life to counter the menace of their environment.
According to Gwarinda(1997) Education for Liberation is a process where an individual is freed from ignorance ,superstition and any form of oppressions which are physically ,emotionally or mentally. The oppressive values or attituades and parasitic mentality.
Freire(1972) suggests that the oppressed or former oppressed require their own pedagogy (teaching strategies) which are alternatively radical. The contemporary Education system is geared towards domesticating Education.
The oppressive Education system is characterised by determinism as it entells learners that all unfolding divine plans promotes parasitic tendences ,that's dependence syndrome, hence it is concerned with traditional banking method of learning where teacher is the fountain of knowledge pouring it to the empty slates children.
This form of Education is teacher centred and children are the passive recipients.
Inaddition progress in oppressive Education centres on the external sources of knowledge ,wisdom and ideas trickle from the teacher to the learners for them to accept them and go through stages of their oppressive behaviour. They (children) rationally agreed to be loyal to the elite in authority and subscribed to their dominance,thus become Educated servants.
In constrast liberation Education is mainly concerned for each member of the society to take exclusive part and not only the teacher is the guru of all social knowledge,wisdom ,facts and ideas ,then the learners can question them freely without any form of fear and nepotism.
Knowledge should be built and as changeable with the new demands of the society and can refined to suit the new community situation ,hence Education should not be domesticated ,but rather emancipated to select the best from other cultural activities done elsewhere as they should tally with own immediate culture and select the best out of it. Which really means Education is the selection from culture. Community members despite their age differences should be respected as equal beings with the capability to think and have feelings to perceive reality with their own senses.
Like the purpose of religion to give the truth of the spiritual world ,Education is also the light of the society from one generation to another.
A society which invests in Education of its citizens ,especially children is really sanctify its prosperous future.
Education by vitue of its enlightment ,is the holistic process by which one generation transmits its known knowledge and cultural activities to the succeeding generations or the system by which individual aspirations and vision are reviewed to findout how effectively they can be responsible in their society. The trationalists regards Education as preparation for life ,whilst pragmatists argued that Education is life itself through participation in various spheres of life to counter the menace of their environment.
According to Gwarinda(1997) Education for Liberation is a process where an individual is freed from ignorance ,superstition and any form of oppressions which are physically ,emotionally or mentally. The oppressive values or attituades and parasitic mentality.
Freire(1972) suggests that the oppressed or former oppressed require their own pedagogy (teaching strategies) which are alternatively radical. The contemporary Education system is geared towards domesticating Education.
The oppressive Education system is characterised by determinism as it entells learners that all unfolding divine plans promotes parasitic tendences ,that's dependence syndrome, hence it is concerned with traditional banking method of learning where teacher is the fountain of knowledge pouring it to the empty slates children.
This form of Education is teacher centred and children are the passive recipients.
Inaddition progress in oppressive Education centres on the external sources of knowledge ,wisdom and ideas trickle from the teacher to the learners for them to accept them and go through stages of their oppressive behaviour. They (children) rationally agreed to be loyal to the elite in authority and subscribed to their dominance,thus become Educated servants.
In constrast liberation Education is mainly concerned for each member of the society to take exclusive part and not only the teacher is the guru of all social knowledge,wisdom ,facts and ideas ,then the learners can question them freely without any form of fear and nepotism.
Knowledge should be built and as changeable with the new demands of the society and can refined to suit the new community situation ,hence Education should not be domesticated ,but rather emancipated to select the best from other cultural activities done elsewhere as they should tally with own immediate culture and select the best out of it. Which really means Education is the selection from culture. Community members despite their age differences should be respected as equal beings with the capability to think and have feelings to perceive reality with their own senses.
Teachers can improve on commenting Learners in developing the commuincative skills
Children in the primary schools,learn language specificaly to develop their communicative skills.For them to be very successfull in the language learning there a need for the teacher to improve on the way delivering instructions in the language lessons and giving good comments both orally and in their written work.
The teacher should therefore do marking of the children's work and emulate their efforts , view it sympathetically as they are still developing these essential skills for the way they should communicate informally and formally. Plenty of oral practice is essential before they are directed into any written work. Following these oral sessions the teacher can easily spot some errors which can be avoided when they are writing.
The comments teacher gives to the learner's written work should motivates the learner rather than being abusive which can left the learner even more demotivated and lose focus on the way to develop communicative skills.
Children feel well satisfied and secured when their teacher goes through their work and give them constructive comments.
The comments should convey the information received and application of rigorous assessment not necessarily the grammatical accuracy.
Usually the teacher should give children a purposeful written work ,so that when marking the more emphasis should be concentrated on the purpose. Generally if children are guided to perform according to a specific purpose they intent to get empowered and seek to know the reason why they get involved in such exercise. For example when you tasked your children to write a letter to their parents asking for a money to go to a certain educational trip.The layout might be the focus not spelling errors ,accuracy of languge structures like prepositions and other points this is the major point supported by Chomsky's theory of natural way of learning a language.
If your marking system involve the use of symbols GR,W.O,SP, sometimes these learners has a problem to get these meanings.Thereafter your marking is more punitive than to be supportive and appreciative.
After the children's work is well marked and the areas they went wrong is clearly spotted,then of course they is a need to do some corrections.The teacher can now go through with them again into oral practice inorder to revise their weakness. The teacher 's eye conduct should be more improved to read every child so that they should not repeat the same mistakes again.This will help them to be more attentive and carefully listen to instructions from their teacher. Remember a well done oral work before written work can produce a good results with few mistakes. Then the corrections are rare. However the corrections must be done as soon as possible after the exercise , The reflective teacher is obliged to mark the children's work as soon as possible before they get into new written task of the same subject and children must taught to do corrections first before they write the next exercise which usually is completely different from this previous one as this can easily disrupts the lesson demands and easily lead the learner to be confused due to constant changes of the specific attention needed.The teacher should be well organised such that the major errors allocated are dealt with in a given enough time promptly before they go out of control.
The teacher should therefore do marking of the children's work and emulate their efforts , view it sympathetically as they are still developing these essential skills for the way they should communicate informally and formally. Plenty of oral practice is essential before they are directed into any written work. Following these oral sessions the teacher can easily spot some errors which can be avoided when they are writing.
The comments teacher gives to the learner's written work should motivates the learner rather than being abusive which can left the learner even more demotivated and lose focus on the way to develop communicative skills.
Children feel well satisfied and secured when their teacher goes through their work and give them constructive comments.
The comments should convey the information received and application of rigorous assessment not necessarily the grammatical accuracy.
Usually the teacher should give children a purposeful written work ,so that when marking the more emphasis should be concentrated on the purpose. Generally if children are guided to perform according to a specific purpose they intent to get empowered and seek to know the reason why they get involved in such exercise. For example when you tasked your children to write a letter to their parents asking for a money to go to a certain educational trip.The layout might be the focus not spelling errors ,accuracy of languge structures like prepositions and other points this is the major point supported by Chomsky's theory of natural way of learning a language.
If your marking system involve the use of symbols GR,W.O,SP, sometimes these learners has a problem to get these meanings.Thereafter your marking is more punitive than to be supportive and appreciative.
After the children's work is well marked and the areas they went wrong is clearly spotted,then of course they is a need to do some corrections.The teacher can now go through with them again into oral practice inorder to revise their weakness. The teacher 's eye conduct should be more improved to read every child so that they should not repeat the same mistakes again.This will help them to be more attentive and carefully listen to instructions from their teacher. Remember a well done oral work before written work can produce a good results with few mistakes. Then the corrections are rare. However the corrections must be done as soon as possible after the exercise , The reflective teacher is obliged to mark the children's work as soon as possible before they get into new written task of the same subject and children must taught to do corrections first before they write the next exercise which usually is completely different from this previous one as this can easily disrupts the lesson demands and easily lead the learner to be confused due to constant changes of the specific attention needed.The teacher should be well organised such that the major errors allocated are dealt with in a given enough time promptly before they go out of control.
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