Students with special needs require a variety of special classroom materials to succeed in day-to-day activities. The goal of material selection is to think about each student within your classroom and select materials that allow all students to succeed within the lesson you wish to teach. Go through every step of your lesson plan before teaching to ensure you have met the material requirements for each student in your class. For example, if you teach a reading lesson, a child with a reading disability may require a tape recorder so he can listen to the reading assignment.
Students come from many different cultural backgrounds, and you likely have a wide variety of diverse students within your classroom. It is important to accommodate these students in your behavior management plan. Students from other cultures may speak louder in everyday conversation or stay quieter during group activities. Encourage these students to participate respectfully and follow the classroom rules, but also take into consideration these cultural difference during behavior management.
Children with exceptional skills in an academic area require modifications within your classroom. Lesson plans need to be written in a way that allows them to apply themselves to their fullest extent. For example, if you assign a writing assignment to your class, allow gifted students to write a longer paper or use more complex writing skills that would normally be more appropriate for an older child.
Construct a learning environment based on Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. His theory states that children not only learn in a variety of ways, but possess various types of intelligence, such as linguistic or interpersonal. Design lesson plans in a way that every student in your classroom has a chance to "be the star" during a given lesson. Choose a lesson one day that focuses on students with a strong linguistic intelligence, and the next day one that focuses on musical intelligence. It is not necessary to adapt every lesson in a way that caters to every intelligence, but it is crucial to vary the type of intelligence highlighted in the lesson plan.