Dealing with youth who have special needs

Connecting Students with Special Needs to the Environment

The benefit of connecting students both in school and in church to the natural environment both for education and leisure and recreation for student who has disability have received some empirical attention it could be positive change in relationship development and learning. Exposure to the natural environment develops their recreation skills. For giving them a short of period of outdoor activities to nearby natural places had profound benefits for individual to make a progress from their disabilities. Outdoor activities can assist individual to improve maintain physical and psychological health and well being. The purpose of these kinds of study and activity is to take a broad look at outdoor setting that contributes positively to children outdoor activities experience. The students with disability they consider it as wonderful part of their life and for them it is additional into knowledge for having exposed to the natural environment. Though, need to give more attention to them so that make sure that they will be enrich their learning experience. 90% of people with disability are capable of independent or semi-independent living, and all citizens, need to understand the impact of their actions to the natural environment. The learning experience may include their knowledge of environmental issues to help them understand the impact of their environmental decisions on community life.

Connecting Students with Special Needs to the Environment

Based on an article By Lynn Dominguez and Mary Lou Schilling in Green Teacher Magazine.

Environmental education may be necessary to assist in the development of environmental Stewardship. To the students with disability, they consider it luxury to the fact that they already have traditional subjects, and so they thought this additional education is impossible. Though, students with disability need to understand that these may supplement and enrich their learning experiences.

The Program

Program may run for 2 hours daily for a period of 5 weeks. This will initially be implemented in the church, classroom and progress to include field trips to local parks which is just a walking distance of the church, classroom. The students should explore a variety of different habitats like access to a river, fields and woodlots. There should be a hands-on discovery methods and techniques and this included the following thematic areas:
Air, Water, and Soil:

The impact of each to human and wildlife should be discussed; how to keep environment clean; and garden and tree planting.

Water cycle and water sheds:

This activity includes demonstrating the water cycle, an action-oriented activity exploring the impact of toxins on wildlife and natural habitats, and construction of water shed models that will demonstrate how toxins are carried in a water system and potentially into drinking water.

Recycling and product packaging:

This focuses on the identification of recycling symbols and codes, knowledge of recyclable items, sorting of recyclable products, creative or homemade strategies for recycling, and product purchasing to minimize unnecessary packaging.
Water quality testing and river clean-up:

This curricular area included water quality testing, a river clean-up, and instruction in canoe-paddling which was intended to facilitate water clean-up and to introduce lifelong outdoor activity to students.

Tips on exploring the outdoors:

1. Develop buddy systems following people with out disability to assist people with disability. This system provides instructional assistance, enhance safety and foster inclusion.

2. Focus on the process rather than the outcome of the activity. For example, during paddle down a river, encourage the children to become aware of the natural habitat rather than placing primary focus on the length of the trip and the quality of the paddling stroke.

3. Repeat and review more often than you would with regular students. To reduce boredom, use a variety of approaches to teach the same skill or concept.

4. Encourage participation by all children in the classroom. Active participation reinforces abstract concepts that are first introduced in the classroom and then apply it outside. This will also enhance interaction between members to enhance communication and social skills.

5. Consider both mental and chronological age when selecting activities. It is important to respect student chronological age while directing information to their mental age. This is important with teenagers with mental retardation.

6. Use field trips as sensory learning experiences to help students become more aware of the environment. Encourage students to touch, smell, and listen especially with their eyes closed.

7. Provide the most normal learning environment possible. Students with cognitive impairments do not easily transfer information presented in the classroom to the natural environment that’s why most functional learning environment is to be created.

8. Adapt activities to the physical impairments of the individual:

For people with vision impairment, use tactile boundaries, brightly colored objects and specific visual cues.
For those who are hard of hearing, provide extra visual aids, avoid hand gestures and assure proper lighting and positioning.
Be aware of secondary medical conditions that may limit participation.
When a person displays decreased strength and endurance, reduced the length of activity session and build in rest periods.
When a person displays a decreased balance, it maybe appropriate to provide a wider base of support, lower the center of gravity or use stability bars.
If a person displays decreased coordination, you may wish to increase the size of the equipment and use lightweight, stable equipment.
9. Teach new concepts at the beginning of a session when participants are most alert. This is important to assure attention to task and improve learning.

10. Use step-by-step instruction. Activities may need to be broken down into sequential training steps to accommodate students’ attention deficits and to assure success.

11. Remember that success and fun are the basic ingredients of any recreational or environmental education activity. Make activities fun so that students will maintain their enthusiasm and want to return to outdoor classroom.