The Basics: Supporting Learners – eBook

Description

A teacher’s resource book on dealing with intellectual challenges in a regular classroom.

This book is a resource for teachers who have the opportunity and the responsibility to work with students who have been labeled with intellectual challenges. The fundamental premise is that good teaching is good teaching – for all students. Secondly, this book believes that teachers are good professionals and have both the skills and the spirit to welcome and teach all learners. However, because of lags in teacher training and support, many teachers may fear the challenge of welcoming students who at first glance appear to require special training they have not had.

This book walks through examples that reaffirm the capacity of all teachers to teach all students using their own capacities, the skills and enthusiasm of other students, and the untapped commitment and talents of students labeled intellectually challenged.

As a teacher in a regular classroom you know that you will have students with diverse intellectual abilities and needs in your classroom. This manual is designed to give you, whether you teach kindergarten or Grade 12 Chemistry, some ideas on how you can respond to all your students as a professional and on a professional level. Certain basic teaching strategies work effectively across learners and ages and abilities. It is not as much a task of learning new teaching strategies, as it is a matter of using what you already know with adjustments here and there.