Teaching Disabled Teens
 

Hello,
I am new to this group. I am finishing up my second year teaching English on a volunteer basis to small (2-3) groups of developmentally disabled high schoolers at my kids' school. These teens are extemely motivated and attentive, but the comprehension level, especially in one group, is minimal. I would love to get ideas of worksheets, exercises, games, and teaching techniques for beginning English to older students. We meet once a week for 30min, which isn't much. TIA!

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

Hi Jen,

To answer your question we really need a bit more info about the learners. "Developmentally disabled" covers a wide spectrum of disability and the answer to your questions depends a lot on exactly what the problem is. For example, are you talking about autistic learners, Down Syndrome learners, intellectual disabilities caused by birth problems, or some other type of developmental disability?

There are various websites which can help with specific problems - for example, if the learners are Down Syndrome children, just Google Teaching foreign languages Down syndrome and you'll come up with a number of useful sources.

But if give us a bit more info, we may be able to help more.

Sue

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

Well, one boy is autistic, with a tendency to get angry if he makes too many mistakes. None have Downs' Syndrome. One girl has an English father, so understands a fair bit, but has real problems deciphering words, so written English is really slow. One boy is very diligent, but just extremely slow at understanding things. Two other boys have a fairly good background, and pick things up quickly. As you can see, it's a real mix! And, I don't know who I'll get added next year. I have to keep things very simple for one group, but not infantile either. The other group, I've been able to study some texts and popular songs as a basis for vocabulary. I have no teaching training, so am really winging it here!

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

There's not much out there. If you google ESL developmentally disabled one of the things that comes up is this post! But try it - there are a few things on the page which look interesting.

I wouldn't normally link to sites outside this one, but given the reason for the request, I hope Eric will forgive me this time :o. The site English without Frontiers provides a course (syllabus, materials, T's notes etc) etc designed for the types of learner you describe. There's a small cost for the paper version or a free online version.

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

No problem at all! It's very useful to provide links to such helpful content! :)

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

If you're looking for a book to use, I find Headway A1 is excruciatingly slow for false beginners but absolutely perfect for slow learners. If you can somehow get hold of a copy of the teacher's book there are some good photocopiable activities in the back of that too. There are some PDFs of these floating around on the internet if you wanted to try before you buy.

Re: Teaching Disabled Teens
 

Thank you everyone, for the helpful tips. I'm glad I found this site. This will give me something to work with for next year.:)