Teaching Strategies for Individuals with Mild Retardation

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Teaching Strategies for individuals with mild retardation Intellectual Developmental Disorder Individuals with intellectual disabilities (intellectual developmental disorder, formerly mental retardation) benefit from the same teaching strategies used to teach individuals with learning disabilities, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism. To be successful it has been suggested, that success works best if you break down learning tasks into smaller steps and to introduce each learning task, one step at a time, to avoid overwhelming the student. Once the student has mastered one step, the next step is introduced. This is a progressive, step-wise, learning approach and is characteristic of many learning models. The only difference is the number and size of the sequential steps. When you teach children with intellectual disabilities, you need to keep in mind several factors. First you need to set goals that are most important for the child. Learning the names of the mountains may not be as important as learning where the mountains are located. Next you need to use materials and establish an environment that supports the child’s learning. Finally you need to use some teaching strategies to teach and motivate the child to learn. The following are a few effective teaching strategies that have been developed for students with intellectual disabilities. Hands on Learning: Hands on learning is the process of using activities and other hands on tasks to teach skills. All children and especially children with intellectual impairments learn best through this process. An example would be to use play dough and make letter shapes to learn letters. Play Based Learning: Play based learning is when you use play activities to teach cognitive skills. For example if a child is playing with cars, you sit with the child and start playing too. While playing use
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