Teaching Strategies with an Inclusive Philosophy - Essay Example

Introduction The article emphasizes on the study rooms of inclusive nature which consist of deaf and hearing children. The main focus was on three aspects namely: teaching strategies with inclusive philosophy, the communication of teacher to deaf and hearing kids and the importance of interpreter in the whole scenario. The study consists of classroom observation, interview with teachers and language assessment report. The article shows how the education structure have evolved through these years and reached to the point of inclusive classroom education. Summary The article here lays down the educational process of deaf children. Deaf children have special needs and they have to be educated with extra care and effort. It is usually observed that children with hearing impairment have major problem in phoneme production, syntax and vocabulary. The need of such children always varies according to the defect they have in their sensory organs and therefore educational activities has to be tailored according to it. It has been proved that inclusive classrooms are very beneficial to deaf children as it gives them better exposure. The article really emphasize on how non verbal communication play a vital role in the language development of these kids. The communication procedure and teaching strategies of the educational process of deaf children is the main subject of the article The article pin points those children with hearing impairment come three year later in studies than normal children. Research was practiced to prove the success of three methods of communication used in the education of deaf children. They are lip-reading, lip-reading and finger spelling, and lip-reading, finger spelling and signing. However, Lip-reading, finger spelling, and signing seems to be more effective to these students. This form of communication has shown eighty – six percent of success rate. The sign language is thus shown to increase the learning ability of the deaf kids. However Inclusive classrooms can have negative effect as the teacher uses more than one method to communicate to pupil. If the teacher uses both communication styles simultaneously children can be left in doubtful situation. The students who are hearing are less benefited from this kind of teaching as they are less delivered with information while teacher use sign language. Inclusive language has its merits and demerits as sign language benefit the deaf and can enhance their phonetic aspect while strong vocabulary use can confuse the student with hearing ability. The article further more discuss the techniques which can be used in teaching the deaf students. If the teacher could arrange a smaller class with children seated near to the teacher and giving due attention to them it can better the learning quality of deaf students. And also it should be made sure that speech is of simple manner so that they can grasp things easily. This class also urges for the need of interpreter so that the information is channelised to the kids in a proper way. The interpreter can perform the sign language and also can regulate the actions of students and communicate better to the students the information that the teacher wants to pass on to them. The interpreter also can convey the message what deaf students want to tell out to the teacher. Methodology The focus of study is a school which has implemented the education plan for the children with hearing impairment. There were two classrooms which were observed by a person as a part of the study. The former is a kindergarten/grade one class (K/1) and the latter a grade two/three class (2/3).The K/1 class had nine hearing and seven deaf students and 2/3 class had twelve hearing and two deaf students. The K/1 class had kids of ages five to seven and in the 2/3 class seven to nine and both had well experienced interpreters. The K/1 class had a better experienced teacher in sign language than 2/3class. The observation strategy of the observer was good as he focused only on classroom which was active. The methodology of the study was not praise worthy as there can be seen a presence of interpreter through out the whole session. It is equally important to observe the class in the absence of interpreter to analyze whether the students have been successfully benefited from the class. Even the observer was positioned at the rear of the classroom which could have impaired his observation quality. Four observations took place in the span of two months and this seems to be little to come out with a proper result. The observation should also have been laid out through different days of the week to avoid undue judgment. Ultimately the teachers and interpreters were interviewed to pullout their experience in teaching the deaf kids. The observer also analyzed the number of utterance made, their duration and questions put forward during the whole session. Results The K1 class teacher has given 226 utterances to the hearing kids and while deaf students received 103 utterance. In the 2/3 class 179 utterances were delivered to the hearing students and deaf received only 9 utterances. It was observed that the teacher in the 2/3 class was trying less to involve children the activities of the class because of her inexperience in teaching deaf kids. As per the observation it was found out by the observer that the students with hearing ability benefited more from the class than deaf kids. The K1 class teacher was more confident and communicated more with hearing students than deaf kids. The 2/3 class teacher was reluctant with speech delivery to deaf kids and her overall performance was poor .However the open question ratio in 2/3 class was 7:17(deaf to hearing) compared to K1which was 7: 37 which was good sign. The observer was also pleased to notice the deaf culture ambience in the classrooms. The interpreter role in the classroom was also evaluated. Interpreter communicated with deaf students in sign language the questions and answers they had for teacher. Interpreter also alerted kids who are not paying attention to the class and kept them vigilant. The main aim of the study was if the inclusive class room benefited both deaf and hearing kids equally, the philosophy and strategy involved and the role of interpreter. It could be suggested to look into the interpreter role in better communication between deaf and hearing children. Read More