Special children find their feet in regular schools of city

These are some of the instances how the city schools are trying to integrate differently able children to mainstream education.

Children suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),Dyslexia,Autism,Down’s Syndrome and hearing impairment,are being taught with the regular students in a number of schools these days.

The key difficulty for the children with special needs is that of reading and writing.

To deal with this problem,the schools have appointed counsellors who sit beside these students and keep explaining the concepts one-on-one to the special child while the teacher keeps up a moderate teaching pace.

“For the initial few weeks,we assess the level of understanding among the special children by accompanying them in the classroom. Our teachers mould their teaching pace accordingly,while we keep on elaborating everything to the child side by side ensuring that the child follows at least 25 to 30 per cent of the lecture. We then cover the remaining in our remedial classes,” Aditi Kohli,a counsellor from Saupin’s School Sector 32,said.

However,the gifted children also require behavioural counselling,shared the counsellors.

“We need to be highly patient and cooperative with the differently able children. As their level of comprehension in the classroom teaching remains low,they tend to lose attention quickly. Due to this,many times,they start distracting others,” Jagdish Raj Hans,senior counsellor at Mount Carmel School,Sector 47,said.

Meawhile,Gursimran,another counsellor from Saupin’s school said,“In the junior wing,we have had difficulties in making the students cooperate with the special children. We tell students to be friendly to these children and over the months,the special kids have shown a lot of improvement.”