Hello everyone, I am a pre-service third year Elementary Education major with K-12 Special education endorsements. I want overall teach special education in a setting three or higher environment with Nonverbal individuals. With all the specialization and individualization that goes into working with this group of individuals, how can I make more complex science ideas fun and more suited to understand? I know that I can specialize it to the student's interests and abilities, but what are some pieces of advice? I found myself to be loving the idea of teaching science, but it is a little tricky thinking about how I can apply that to my specialty. Thank you!
Hello Emma,
To make more science ideas fun and to give students a better overall understanding, I would recommend offering hands-on experiences and visual supports. I think providing sensory bins and visual schedules would be necessary for this group of students. I would also provide nature bins for these students, which is great small world play. This opens up a great deal of possibilities for language development as well. We have one student at our school who loves grass, so we made a grass sensory bin for him that he enjoys. It's important to cater to the needs of each individual student. Another idea would be to reach out to your support staff and ask if they have any strategies or activities that would fit the specific needs of your students. It will be important to set individualized goals for each student based on their interests, you can then adjust the science lessons to align with the goals.
Hi Emma,
I have a resource that I think is amazing for science teachers for K-12. FunScienceDemos is a great youtube channel with different science demonstrations and experiments that make learning and teaching science fun. There is also a website called FunScienceSupport with other useful resources for science teachers. I think that introducing demos and fun experiments in class will help make learning more engaging and fun. You can find the link for the youtube channel and teacher support website here: linktr.ee/funsciencedemos. Hope this helps!
I work at a public school that is only for students with disabilities, many of whom are non-verbal and we regularly have hands-on as well as technology-centered science activities. Hopefully the non-verbal students you work with will have AAC devices or work with PECS cards. My specific classroom has two fully verbal students and two who primarily use AAC devices and they all fullly participate in science lessons. Sometimes you just have to give the non-verbal students extra time to formulate what they want to say with their device. We also do a lot of experiment turn taking where the teacher first models the step needed in the experiment. We've had some exploration experiments that included pumpkin disection at each student's desk so they could work independently and then one pumpkin paired with elephant toothpaste. We've also had students take pictures or screenshots of science items and the non-verbal students are excellent users of regular iPads and participate in these activities. I also think that when you are working with students with autism, it's a good idea to try to incorporate students' deep interests if you can. For example, when we were studying ocean ecosystems we had a full day on the squid because there was a student with a perseverant interest in squids. And our school librarian is lovely and she got extra squid books to support his interest as well. But I'm curious if others have ideas for ways to support students with autism in a science classroom?
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