Setting Up Your Classroom: Evidence Based Practices for Students with Down Syndrome

- So let's talk about setting up your classroom. There's a couple of key ideas that you want to implement in the classroom so that all of your students with disabilities are successful, but that really support students with Down Syndrome. So let's talk about those. First off, there's visual supports. And visual supports are important in every special ed classroom. I mean, let's face it. We all benefit from visual supports. Those visual supports are important from early learning all the way through post-secondary. And it's important that you have them positioned in the classroom in meaningful ways. So let's talk about some ways you can include visual supports in your classroom. Number one is having a classroom schedule or calendar that people can refer to. The second thing you'd want to include is a student schedule visual. That can be a micro or a macro schedule, depending on the student's needs. The only difference between those two is if you have a larger schedule that's going throughout the day or a smaller schedule, that's just pertaining to things that we're doing right now. Task analysis becomes really important if you have a student who's trying to learn a larger skill or behavior. And having good visuals for task analysis will help you move that student forward. The last thing that you want to include is behavior expectation visuals. Those can help a student remember the classroom routine, procedures, or rules in a way that's meaningful. So make sure you're including visuals that have purpose and will help your students with Down Syndrome be more productive in the classroom. One important thing to remember is that students with Down Syndrome may struggle with short-term memory, but they have really good long-term memory. So if you're purposeful with implementing classroom routine and procedures, you'll support that student to become more independent in the classroom and to have less behavior issues. So put those visuals into place. Hands-on opportunities to learn, including manipulatives, is a great classroom strategy for students with disabilities, especially those with Down Syndrome. So let's talk about those. As you set up your classroom, remember, your student with Down Syndrome can have issues with hearing, vision, fine and gross motor skills, and possibly some communication skills. So having hands-on tasks really allows a student to become more involved with their learning in a way that's concrete and provides extra supports. You can add some of these components to your class or lesson so that your students with Down Syndrome can interact in a more meaningful way. You can include manipulatives for math lessons. And those can be things like dice, dominoes, or any other manipulative that helps a student learn a concept. Remember that doing is more meaningful than reading. So if you can incorporate active learning within your classroom, it will help your students to remember new skills. Last is to use doodling to take notes, or a graphic organizer so that a student can do these things in a more meaningful way that's a little more hands-on and supported. You're also going to want to include functional skills in your lessons. Remember, students with Down Syndrome can learn, but it takes them a little longer to do so. So incorporating those functional skills into your lessons will help them in the long term to become more independent and more successful in their post-secondary. Now, this doesn't mean that we exclude our students from academic lessons and only focus on functional skills. What we want to do is incorporate functional skills in the academic lessons that we're teaching so they can learn both of them simultaneously. There's a couple of ways that you can do that. One is to incorporate real world examples in the lessons. And you can include those in text passages or math word problems as you're designing your lessons. You can also use real life manipulatives like coins or digital apps that a student can use after they leave school. You're also going to want to include self-help and advocacy skills in your lessons. What happens when a student doesn't have all the materials that they need? Do they know how to overcome that obstacle in an effective way? And last is to build in some self-care mini lessons or activities that your students will do in the transition so they can be working on these skills all the time.