Distance Learning for kids with special needs.
We continue to be still amid the coronavirus pandemic which led to school closures for kids from all over the world. In some parts of the world school year is almost done for this year and summer vacations have started. All of a sudden we were pushed into the world of distance learning wherein the responsibility to teach our kids fell on our shoulders with many of us juggling both roles still working remotely at home with the additional responsibility of educating our kids through distance learning.
I personally was a bit apprehensive as to how my son will cope with remote learning as he is a child on the spectrum and he like many of the kids on the spectrum needs an individualized type of learning with alignment to their IEP goals. The point of writing this blog post is to share some strategies which I used with my own son .we still have almost a whole month of school left before summer break officially starts.
It is a well-known fact our kids thrive on a structure to reduce frustration and anxiety. It can be challenging to add some new demands on them during this time as they are not in school and maybe not able to fully understand the gravity of the situation. The first thing I started with is to download a visual schedule which helped me in a great way to structure his day with lots of room for flexibility. He struggles to work for a long time so having some kind of consistency built around it helped. Aarian is motivated by technology and it has helped his learning in a big way even before this pandemic started. This is a big advantage for our kids as most of them are very open to learning with technology.
The next thing I did is to have a consistent work time for my son throughout the day. I schedule 20-30 minutes learning block twice a day as I find this has helped him be successful at distance learning. We do our first block in the morning when he is fresh and more receptive to working. I do have to schedule a lot of breaks within this session but I find this way he is more productive in the session. We need to be realistic here we cannot replicate the entire school day for our kids. We started with Google classroom wherein his teacher set up activities for the whole class and then individualized activities for each student depending on their learning goals. Aarian is unable to write so we are currently doing the online activities every day as he enjoys doing them. Their school has signed up for IXL Canada. It is a learning website wherein students can practice Maths and English skills in various grade levels. We daily do a few activities which his teachers set up for him twice a day. He enjoys doing them. So my first big takeaway is to find something which is fun for our kids to learn as this way they will be motivated to do so thereby avoiding tantrums and meltdowns.
I personally had to go through a learning curve as I had to learn how to use google classroom, google meet, using Boom cards which is the current rage for most of teachers and students with or without special needs. I must confess I have come a long way from where I started but still have a long way to go.
The next thing which is helping Aarian in a big way is using Boom cards. They are digital task cards that require no printing and laminating as we all know very well resources are scarce at this time and we need to use all available resources resourcefully. The best thing about Boom Cards is the kids have so much fun unaware they are learning the whole time. The second advantage is they are self-checking, digital activities which have inbuilt audio and gives students instant feedback on their answers so they don't make mistakes and learn incorrectly. The biggest advantage however is you don't have to babysit your kids they can do this independently. My son loves them so much he is doing them independently. As a parent, all you need to do is to create an account on boom-learning. They are offering free accounts at this time. Then all you need to do is to buy Boom cards from Teachers pay Teachers or from the boom learning website. If you don't want to spend money buying them there are lots of free ones available.
The other thing we do is to read lots of books. There are lots of companies that were very generous during this pandemic and offered free memberships for a limited time. We do read paper-based books as I still feel our kids do need some hands-on activities as well in addition to technology to help them in the real world. My son also uses an AAC device to communicate as he is nonverbal. We had just finished the trial period for Touch Chat which is a full-featured communication solution for individuals like my son who cannot use their own voice. The good news is he has been approved for the new app but at this time we are uncertain as to when we will get it. I am working with his SLP at this time to help my son with some literacy-based activities to use with his AAC.
I am concluding here Digital learning has been a learning curve for all of us and it's not bad or scary. I am confident my son is learning every day which will help him in avoiding regression which is very important to me. There are some things like Boom cards which I intend to continue using once all this is over. I hope you can find some strategies in this post helpful for your own kids. Hopefully, the pandemic gets over so we can all have some kind of normalcy in our lives.
I personally was a bit apprehensive as to how my son will cope with remote learning as he is a child on the spectrum and he like many of the kids on the spectrum needs an individualized type of learning with alignment to their IEP goals. The point of writing this blog post is to share some strategies which I used with my own son .we still have almost a whole month of school left before summer break officially starts.
It is a well-known fact our kids thrive on a structure to reduce frustration and anxiety. It can be challenging to add some new demands on them during this time as they are not in school and maybe not able to fully understand the gravity of the situation. The first thing I started with is to download a visual schedule which helped me in a great way to structure his day with lots of room for flexibility. He struggles to work for a long time so having some kind of consistency built around it helped. Aarian is motivated by technology and it has helped his learning in a big way even before this pandemic started. This is a big advantage for our kids as most of them are very open to learning with technology.
The next thing I did is to have a consistent work time for my son throughout the day. I schedule 20-30 minutes learning block twice a day as I find this has helped him be successful at distance learning. We do our first block in the morning when he is fresh and more receptive to working. I do have to schedule a lot of breaks within this session but I find this way he is more productive in the session. We need to be realistic here we cannot replicate the entire school day for our kids. We started with Google classroom wherein his teacher set up activities for the whole class and then individualized activities for each student depending on their learning goals. Aarian is unable to write so we are currently doing the online activities every day as he enjoys doing them. Their school has signed up for IXL Canada. It is a learning website wherein students can practice Maths and English skills in various grade levels. We daily do a few activities which his teachers set up for him twice a day. He enjoys doing them. So my first big takeaway is to find something which is fun for our kids to learn as this way they will be motivated to do so thereby avoiding tantrums and meltdowns.
I personally had to go through a learning curve as I had to learn how to use google classroom, google meet, using Boom cards which is the current rage for most of teachers and students with or without special needs. I must confess I have come a long way from where I started but still have a long way to go.
The next thing which is helping Aarian in a big way is using Boom cards. They are digital task cards that require no printing and laminating as we all know very well resources are scarce at this time and we need to use all available resources resourcefully. The best thing about Boom Cards is the kids have so much fun unaware they are learning the whole time. The second advantage is they are self-checking, digital activities which have inbuilt audio and gives students instant feedback on their answers so they don't make mistakes and learn incorrectly. The biggest advantage however is you don't have to babysit your kids they can do this independently. My son loves them so much he is doing them independently. As a parent, all you need to do is to create an account on boom-learning. They are offering free accounts at this time. Then all you need to do is to buy Boom cards from Teachers pay Teachers or from the boom learning website. If you don't want to spend money buying them there are lots of free ones available.
The other thing we do is to read lots of books. There are lots of companies that were very generous during this pandemic and offered free memberships for a limited time. We do read paper-based books as I still feel our kids do need some hands-on activities as well in addition to technology to help them in the real world. My son also uses an AAC device to communicate as he is nonverbal. We had just finished the trial period for Touch Chat which is a full-featured communication solution for individuals like my son who cannot use their own voice. The good news is he has been approved for the new app but at this time we are uncertain as to when we will get it. I am working with his SLP at this time to help my son with some literacy-based activities to use with his AAC.
I am concluding here Digital learning has been a learning curve for all of us and it's not bad or scary. I am confident my son is learning every day which will help him in avoiding regression which is very important to me. There are some things like Boom cards which I intend to continue using once all this is over. I hope you can find some strategies in this post helpful for your own kids. Hopefully, the pandemic gets over so we can all have some kind of normalcy in our lives.
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