Students with intellectual disabilities present especially clear examples of a universal dilemma of teaching: since there is not enough time to teach everything, how do we choose what to teach? One basis for selecting activities is to relate learning goals to students' everyday lives and activities, just as you would with all students. This strategy addresses the other defining feature of mental retardation, the student's difficulties with adapting to and functioning in everyday living. In teaching addition and subtraction, for example, you can create examples about the purchasing of common familiar objects (e.g. food) and about the need to make or receive change for the purchases. Similar considerations apply to learning new reading or oral language vocabulary. Instead of simply learning words in a “basic reading” series (or reading textbook), try encouraging the student to learn words that are especially useful to the student's own life. Often the student, not you yourself, is the best person to decide what these words actually are.
An adaptive, functional approach can help in nonacademic areas as well. In learning to read or fitell time” on a clock, for example, try focusing initially on telling the times important to the student, such as when he or she gets up in the morning or when schools starts. As you add additional times that are personally meaningful to the student, he or she works gradually towards full knowledge of how to read the hands on a clock. Even if the full knowledge proves slow to develop, however, the student will at least have learned the most useful clock knowledge first.
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