23 Jul Curriculum-Based Remedial Education
Education is a process of acquiring knowledge through various forms and not just attending school. Mostly educating children is a process that is conducted through schools. All the schools have some structure/ board to teach and they frame their curriculum accordingly. So the students are expected to learn the best through the curriculum. Based on the board and the school’s choice of introducing the concepts, the students are exposed to different learning styles. The level of learning depends on the intelligence quotient of the student.
Some children might be able to learn when the teacher teaches at school, some children might learn with some additional support like tutors or parents but the children with special needs would need different methods of teaching and concept introduction, something that they can functionally relate to. Remedial Education ensures different rehabs methods of teaching and creative strategies for learning being employed Remedial education is part of special education.
Remedial education helps the child to catch up with their curriculum expectations as per their grade level as well as per the pace of the child. Some schools with a robust resource department often provide it at school, however, there might be a need to expose the child with multiple revisions of the same at home as well.
Objectives of Curriculum based remedial education:
- To make the child understand the concepts which would help them in life and also in further grades. The children with special needs find it difficult to understand the concepts in a group set up and also they have difficulty to learn only through verbal explanations. Remedial education aims to make the child understand the concepts through a more holistic multisensory approach which would help him or her to answer with knowledge.
- To enable the child to cope up with the age level or grade level curriculum expectations. The remedial educator would plan or set goals as per the academic expectations of the curriculum so that the child could participate actively in the school with the classmates as well as work on his areas of weaknesses.
- To make the learning process easy and interesting for the child. Our education system has generalised concepts in the curriculum. So the remedial tutor would work to make the concepts short and precise with various methods like mind maps, anchor charts etc. So that the child would enjoy the learning process rather than feel like a burden or responsibility. The goals are further reduced chapter or concept-wise ensuring the maximum curriculum is made more child friendly and easy to grasp.
Steps in planning and executing curriculum based remedial programme:
Every child is different in various aspects like their interests, strengths and difficulties. Also, there are differences in profiles for children with special needs in various age groups based on their difficulties. Here we are going to discuss which are the various steps involved while planning curriculum based remedial programmes.
- Collecting information: The remedial instructor has to collect information about the child. Information should include a child’s assessment results, strengths, weaknesses, current level performance, interests, areas to work on, academic behaviours, past academic records, books, attention span, sitting tolerance etc. The remedial instructor also should understand the child’s school curriculum, basic teaching methods of the school and expectations from the school.
- Building rapport with the child: The collected information would help the remedial instructor to plan sessions to build rapport with the child. Rapport is the base to get maximum productivity of the session. So it would be better that, for the first few sessions one should focus more on the rapport by planning the sessions based on the child’s interests and strengths. Once the rapport and the trust built, it would be easy for the instructor to teach the child. Rapport building sessions would make the child feel comfortable and happy for the session.
- Basic assessments in various areas: Though the remedial instructor collected information, it would be better to do informal assessments in various areas to understand the child’s level. The assessment process would help the instructor in making an Individualized Education plan to start working with the child.
- Individualized Education Plan: It is a written document to plan the goals for the child for a given duration and mostly the goals are planned for a month. This plan would cover all areas of learning like reading, writing, spelling, concepts, numeracy etc. The remedial tutor also would collect the school curriculum plan for the month, so that she could prepare the child in advance with basic knowledge of that concept. Pre preparation would help the child to feel familiarise with the concept which would be taught in the classroom. The remedial instructor also plans to inculcate appropriate academic behaviours which would help the child to show progress in learning. This individualized education plan would help the instructor to design teaching strategies and teaching aids. Both teaching strategies and teaching aids play a vital role in remedial teaching. These two would differentiate remedial teaching from regular tutoring. Every month the plan would be reviewed and further planning would be done for the upcoming month.
- Execution of the plan in the session: The remedial tutor would plan the sessions as per the Individualized education plan. She would categorize the time like 10 minutes of Reading and comprehension, 2 minutes break with some fun activity, 10 minutes of Numeracy etc. While dealing with academics, the remedial tutor would make it interesting for the child. For example, if the concept is related to maths operations, she would organise shop and then through pretend play she could teach the operations. This kind of teaching would help the child to relate the concepts in real-life applications and also the child would enjoy doing it. Another example if the remedial instructor is teaching some geographical concepts, rather than reading the whole lesson from the book she would prepare mind maps with important points and also with the pictures. This would make the learning process easy for the child. The teaching aids and strategies would be a multi-sensory approach based on the best medium of learning of the child. The visual learners would learn from charts, auditory learners would learn by listening to the instructor with the pictures etc.
- Revision and preparation for the assessments: Remedial tutor plays a major role in preparing a child for the assessments. The children with special needs would need regular and intense revision to make them master in the concepts. So the remedial instructor would plan regular revision of the concepts. Most of the concepts like addition, subtraction, science concepts have continuity in their further grades. So the regular revision not only helps in assessments and also it helps the child in further grades. While preparing the child for the assessments the remedial instructor would prepare model assessment worksheets and make the child get used to the process. So that during actual assessments the child would be able to handle the assessment pressure better. The remedial tutor also would prepare the child to give him or her best without thinking about the outcome. Motivation and encouragement would help the child to attend the assessments with less pressure and less fear of the outcome.
- Academic behaviours: In remedial sessions, there would not be much focus on behaviour modifications is given, still, the remedial tutor would need to work on some behaviours which would cause hindrance to the learning process of the child. Through the proper plan the remedial tutor would inculcate the appropriate academic behaviours like sitting posture, taking proper interval back, lesser interruption during an explanation of concepts, increased sitting tolerance etc.
On the whole, the curriculum-based remedial programme would help the child to enjoy the process of learning, reduce the stress level of the child while learning and most importantly the child would give his or her best academic performance as per their grade level. The parents also should compare the improvement of the child with their own performances rather than comparing it with the performances of other children. This would motivate the child to work hard to achieve more. A remedial tutor would not only focus on the quantitative performance of the child in academics, but she would also focus on qualitative performance. The curriculum-based remedial programme is a team effort. The remedial instructor, the parents and the child should work together to get the best outcome. Please do read what Little Pods has to offer https://littlepods.in/child-services/
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