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Making art activities work for students with special needs
Arts & Activities, Dec, 2005 by Anne Vize
Teachers who work with students with special needs in mainstream or specialist settings need to consider a number of issues when planning their art program. These issues relate to the student and their specific needs, and also to the teacher and the teaching environment. The following suggestions should assist you in planning.
MODIFY YOUR OBJECTIVES It may be appropriate to modify objectives for a student with special needs to ensure he or she is able to succeed in your art room. It may be possible to use generalized objectives across a number of curriculum areas, or to modify the lesson objectives that you have written for the rest of your class.
Think about the key elements of the task, and which ones are the highest priorities. Focus on one or two related to the activity itself, and perhaps one or two generalized objectives. Keep it simple. Think about objectives related to areas such as:
* Length of time able to be spent on a single activity.
* Ability to make choices between objects or tasks.
* Mastery of new skills or sub skills.
* Effective communication of ideas and thoughts.
* Ability to manage behavior in the art room.
POSITIONING AND STABILITY For some students, problems with mobility or muscle tone and control mean that it is difficult to manage some art activities, particularly where fine control of movement is required. For these students, try providing a way of stabilizing the rest of the body so that the student is free to concentrate their attention only on the part they are trying to use. Resting against a rolled-up towel on the edge of a tabletop, or providing some physical support to the elbow or forearm are both simple ways of doing this.
It is important to realize that controlling and balancing the body is a skill in itself, and that some students might expend a considerable amount of energy and thought in doing so. It might be wise to keep the actual activity simple, so that the student can concentrate on maintaining an effective body position rather than having to also focus on a difficult task.
For students who have a lot of upper-body movement, perhaps as a result of cerebral palsy, it might be appropriate to explore art activities that utilize these movements in a positive manner to create an artwork. Abstract-art pieces that involve lots of color or texture, rather than intricate, detailed pieces, could be a good choice.
MAKING DECISIONS The ability to make choices and decisions is a powerful and effective part of daily communication for students with special needs. Talk to the classroom teacher or others who are involved with the student about how to link activities in the art room with communication and choice-making strategies that re being taught elsewhere. Choice-making is generally taught in a hierrchical manner. Students are first encouraged to make choices using real objects, and then later building on these skills until they re able to choose between written, signed or spoken words and phrases.
ENCOURAGING CHOICE-MAKING Imagine you are doing a series of eight lessons on pottery with your class. You have a student with a moderate intellectual disability in your class. You know he enjoys the tactile experience of getting his hands in the clay and shaping it into various simple forms, and he has used the potter's wheel a few times in the past. You decide to provide him with some choices related to the activity, such as:
* White stoneware clay or terra-cotta clay? (Hold up a sample of each and ask "which clay?")
* Hand building or working on the wheel with an assistant (use a photo of each work station and ask the student to point or name the one he would like).
* Choice between three colored glazes for his finished shapes (provide samples of each color and ask him to choose the one he prefers).
MODIFYING AN EXISTING ACTIVITY Sometimes it's not appropriate to plan a separate activity for a special-needs student. For reasons of practicality, time or to meet specific learning objectives, it might be important for all your students to be doing the same activity. But, how do you adapt the activity for a student who is notable to do the same things as the rest of the class?
Think about whether you or an assistant can prepare some of the initial steps prior to class, so that the student completes the last steps to create the finished product. This is not only effective from the point of view of working on the same task as the test of the class, but also ensures the student experiences success.
Consider whether you need to limit the activity's duration so that lack of concentration and fatigue do not become limiting factors. Sometimes it is better to complete a short task well and then allow some free time than to persist beyond the student's ability to cope and end up with an activity that fails. Think about whether the activity you have chosen lends itself to a pairs or groups arrangement, so the task can be completed successfully and your students can be engaged in a teamwork situation at the same time.
