Supportive Environments - Essay Example

Supportive Environments One strategy that helps create a supportive climate in the room is peer support. In peer support, are placed in pairs or made part of groups that can participate in the learning activities directed at enhancing their social skills along with education. A big advantage of this instructional approach is that it neither requires additional funding nor additional staff. This is essentially a research-based approach of instruction that leads to positive outcomes related to achievement and inculcates a feeling of belongingness in the students with the school and the people associated with it. Teachers can use peer support as an instructional approach and tool in order to improve the quality of education for the students both with and without disabilities. Peer support can be used in different ways, three of which are discussed as follows. Use of these innovative ways of teaching helps the teachers address the social as well as educational needs of students with disabilities in the general settings of education. In order to implement these instructional methodologies effectively, it is imperative that each model is planned upfront. Teachers should try to align the personal goals of the students with the lesson goals so that students make genuine effort to draw the right conclusions from the lessons and use them for their academic and professional achievements. Three ways in which peer support can be used in the classroom include collaborative learning, cross-age peer support, and peer modeling, discussed as follows: Collaborative Learning Collaborative learning is an instructional strategy that can be employed to reinforce the skills inculcated by a teacher. This method of teaching allows the students time to review the lessons, and practice the exercises as well as identifies opportunities that students can avail to improve their thinking skills. Cross-Age Peer Support Cross-age peer support is a strategy of teaching which improves the tendency of students to learn in the general setting of education or the traditional classroom environment. This teaching approach particularly involves students learning at higher levels such as the high school students who provide the elementary and secondary school students with instructional support. Peer Modeling Another very effective strategy which teachers can use to improve the learning processes among students in the classroom is peer modeling. In this instructional strategy, a teacher can take assistance from the peers with instruction, making the directions clear for the students, and providing them with social reminders without any interruption in the lesson cycle. This provides the peers with an opportunity to identify appropriate models of behavior for the students which serves to improve their social skills. How to use peer support Implementing such a strategy of instruction requires considerable and prudent planning on the part of the teacher. First, I would need to identify the high-school students that would volunteer to serve as the guides, mentors, and helpers of the younger students. Depending upon the policy of the school, I may or may not have funds to provide the volunteering high-school students with certain privileges for doing the job. However, best results are achieved when the high-school students offer support and guidance without placing a demand for any compensation, because real help comes from true spirit to do social service. Once the high-school volunteers have been identified, I would pair each elder with a younger student depending upon what kind of mentoring skills the senior student has and what kind of learning disabilities the younger student has. In order to form the right pairs, I would first identify what kind of learning disabilities are exhibited by each of the younger students individually. I would make a list of students’ names with their respective learning disabilities. This compilation would be a result of students’ personal input and opinions on their learning disabilities as well as my observation of them since the time I have started to teach them. Senior students would be asked to choose the junior students according to their expertise in targeting the different kinds of learning disabilities. As it might be hard for the senior students to find time to mentor the junior students on a daily basis, I would plan, schedule, and arrange meetings once a week or once every two weeks where all the pairs can gather on one platform and the senior students can mentor the junior students. This can be done in the lunch breaks or the last period of the day. In addition to arranging peer support for the students with learning disabilities, I would also bring certain radical changes in the day-to-day instructional method in the class. As a teacher of a class consisting of up to 25 students, I am able to study and understand the psychology of almost every student to a great extent. Improving the instructional strategies to enhance the learning ability of the students with disabilities imparts the need to identify such students first. Students with learning disabilities can be identified from their results in quizzes and tests. Their scores are generally lower compared to the rest of the class, and these are the students that particularly need individualized care and attention. Having identified the students with low scores, I would conduct detailed discussion with each of them and gain their insights and opinions on how they can best understand the concepts. I would also conduct a small test of the identified students personally. This test would be directed at understanding students’ performance with respect to the senses of seeing, hearing, talking, processing information as well as group skills. The test scores would dictate which student requires what kind of personalized care. I would then make special assignments for these students. For example, if a student shows poor group skills, I would bond him/her with a very supportive and caring group of students or individuals to conduct group tasks with him/her. To assist the students with poor cognitive skills, I would also make video lectures available to the students that they can see in their homes. This would particularly be a good strategy to help out students who take long to process information because this way, they would be able to have a greater understanding of the lectures. For students with visionary problems, I would ensure that I provide them with visual aids to do the assignments or customize the assignments to suit their needs. Benefits of peer support for students with learning disabilities Benefits of peer support and inclusion for students with disabilities are many. Use of these instructional methods benefits students with and without disabilities alike. Benefits that students with disabilities get from the use of such instructional strategy include but are not limited to improved relations with peers, increased social initiations, increased motivation and tendency to achieve goals, peer role modeling, increased access to the general curriculum, greater interactional opportunities, increased collaboration with the school staff, higher expectations, increased parental involvement and interest, increased integration of families into the community. The cumulative effect of the power of peers deters the likelihood of occurrence of such unfavorable events as bullying and discrimination. Instead, students’ integration into the culture of the school increases with peer support. Such a school system is not established by the teacher alone; while a teacher plays a pivotal role in establishing such an educational setup, yet effective establishment and implementation of such instructional strategies imparts the need for a collaborative effort from a team of teacher, peers, and students. In such educational setup, students elect their class fellows with disabilities to serve as homecoming queen or king or in different kinds of class officer roles.   Read More