Emotional and behavioral impairment include children diagnosed with autism or attention deficit hyperactive disorder. These children can be very challenging because they can be completely defiant or be very passive. When teaching such children, your strategy should be to focus on teaching individuals or small groups so that you can give personal attention. In this way, you can monitor their behavior and get immediate feedback. Communicate clearly and consistently with your students to help them express their emotions. Keep a predictable routine so that they can know what to expect daily and can begin following the same without guidance. Rewarding those who have successfully accomplished their task also goes a long way in promoting learning. Because of the challenges involved, it is better to have assistants throughout the day to provide you with support.
Students in kindergarten are able to understand, repeat and speak several words coherently. Signs of developmentally delayed students involve lack of competence and unwillingness to communicate with others. To help your students, encourage communication by discussing not only classroom activities but also non-school experiences. Break down words into smaller units of sound and syllables to make them understand easily. Promote contribution from the students by having routine discussion and develop their listening by reading aloud a familiar story as you pause to ask them questions.
Cognitive development includes the ability to make decision, remember and solve problems independently. Children with cognitive impairment will experience difficulty in learning at the same pace with other children who have developed this milestone. These students can learn with the normal teaching strategies like the other students but theirs must be modified to accommodate their level of ability. They need a lot of patience and repetition so you should provide opportunities for the students to relearn and practice what you have taught. Engage the support of parents or guardians and child tutors.
You can use several approaches to teach kindergarten students who show delay in word formation and writing. These include among others; asking the students to write letters repeatedly, connect the dots on dot-to-dot words and have them trace over them so they form letters from left to right. All these will help the student to practice letter recognition. Another strategy is to use several writing tools such as crayons, chalk, magnetic letter and pencils. Different tools will enable them to realize that similar letter combinations make same words. Once they have recognized individual letters, it would be easier for them to write and recognize words.