Reflection 7

I think that some special needs children learn better if technology is being used. I teach a child with downs syndome in Sunday school. He is fourteen years old, but behaves as if he is much younger. I've recently started to notice that he pays much more attention, or is much more interested in what I am saying if I have a video, or some sort of powerpoint to accompany my lesson.

I know that all children are more engaged when technology is present, but getting this particular child to pay attention and participate in class is much harder than dealing with the rest of them. Now that I have found a way to keep his attention, teaching class has become much easier because he doesn't disrupt lessons quite as often.

I was curious if this was a general rule or idea for most down syndome kids, and if it helped with other special needs also, so I decided to observe in a classroom with special needs children and ask the teacher if this was true. The teacher said that anything out the ordinary or anything that is catchy usually helps the children pay attention and technology is one of the tools she often uses to keep the children engaged.

I know that this might sound shallow and harsh, but I didn't think that children with special needs, or at least some of those children, would respond to technology. I'm not quite sure why I thought this, so learning that they do respond is really interesting and helpful in case I have children with special needs in my classes.