NDEJJE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION- KAMPALA CAMPUS

END OF SEMESTER EXAMS

NAME: TUNGWAPE MIRIAM

REG NO.: 19/2/358/W/022

COURSE: BECE

COURSE UNIT: SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION

COURSE UNIT CODE: BEC 1204

YEAR: I

SEMESTER: II

QUESTIONS ANSWERED: 1

Children with special needs are individuals with a mental, emotional, or physical disability.
An individual with special needs may need help with Communication, Movement, Self-care and
decision-making
Examples of special needs may include; hearing impairment, visual impairment, physical
impairment, mental retardation, language impairment, the gifted and talented among others.
Individuals with disabilities or special needs may require special care and attention in the
classroom environment to enable them become acceptable members of the communities they live
in.
Therefore, it is important for the teacher to teach these individuals other aspects according to
their different special needs besides academic content such as the following;
Hearing impairment
Hearing impairment refers to the loss of one’s proper function of hearing. hearing impairment, or
hearing loss, occurs when you lose part or all of your ability to hear.
Hearing loss, deafness, hard of hearing, anacusis, or hearing impairment, is defined as a partial or
total inability to hear. In children it may affect the development of language and can cause work
related difficulties for adults. Hearing loss is caused by many factors, including: genetics, age,
exposure to noise, illness, chemicals and physical trauma.
Different aspects a teacher can teach a child with hearing impairment include;
The oral language approach
The oral language approach to communicating with and educating deaf learners advocates the
auditory-oral approach to communication. The oral approach termed eliminates manual
communication and stresses the use of residual hearing, supplemented by lip reading and speech
training. The primary goal of this approach is the “normalization” of deaf learners to fit more
comfortably into a hearing world by making them oral.
Common features within the oral language approach include:
 Learners who are unable to comprehend speech using hearing alone can gain information
from lip reading.
 There is an emphasis on communicating and the rules of language are assumed to be
learnt over time though using language.
 Every effort is made to provide favorable listening conditions.
 Active listening skills are encouraged.
 The learner is encouraged to use contextual clues and knowledge of the world actively to
aid communication and understanding.

One benefit of the oral approach is that parents and educators do not need to learn a new
language and can thus rely on the spoken language of the community.
An additional benefit is that these learners are said to fit into the hearing community by being
able to speak and lip-read without the community having to adapt to their unique needs.
The sign language approach
Sign language refers to the natural, barrier-free language of deaf people. It is the first language
of a deaf child, and spoken language is the second language of deaf children. Children with
hearing impairment require an exposure to sign language from as early an age as possible, thus
recognizing the importance of a critical period in language acquisition.
Sign languages involve the use hand, facial and body movements as a means of communication.
It is important for children with hearing impairment to learn sign languages because no one
should be left in the dark, no matter what impairments they may have they may have. Those
who suffer from being deaf and have impaired hearing should not be sheltered from
communicating with the rest of their peers. Just because a portion of the population cannot hear
or speak, does not mean that their form of communication should not advance along with the rest
of the world.
Sign languages enable children with hearing impairment to express their feelings, contribute to a
conversation, learn, and overall live their lives as normal as possible.
Also, it is an everlasting skill that can without a doubt make people more well-rounded. Learning
the skill of sign language can also show those with hearing impairment that they are not
forgotten, and they have the same access to communication with the rest of the world as anyone
else.
Everyone deserves to have their voice heard, no matter the circumstances. With this being said,
sign language is a two-way street. The deaf community needs to know it, along with everyone
else around them. They must live in an environment and world that they feel can hear them and
what they are trying to say at all times, and to all walks of life.

Auditory Learning
Auditory learning is a process in which hearing impaired children develop their residual hearing
through guided listening practice. The teacher needs to give the children auditory exercises
which involve the use of environmental sounds, music and speech. Auditory learning requires a
clear presentation of a systematically arranged, progressive sequence of activities. These
activities will ensure that, through the following stimuli employed, the children will acquire the
skills of detection, identification, discrimination and comprehension:
Basic skills required in detection include:
the awareness of the presence and absence of sounds
the ability to attend to sounds
the awareness of the direction of sounds
the ability to recall a sequence of sounds heard, e.g. a rhythmic pattern made by a musical
instrument or by the human.

Basic skills required in identification, discrimination and comprehension include:

Identification of the sources of sounds -- e.g. a drum, a rattle, a telephone, animal

noise, the human voice (male and female) and other environmental noise.

Imitation of sounds -- the ability to repeat a sound heard, e.g. by beating a rhythmic pattern on a
drum or by saying a phoneme, a syllable, a word, a phrase or a sentence heard.

Response to sounds -- the ability to react appropriately to different sounds, especially to the
spoken language, by carrying out a command, answering a question or re-telling a short story
heard.

Visual impairment
This refers to various levels of sight difficulties , which may range from mild to profound.
Person s wjo have severe difficulty in seeing, so much so that they can not read oridinaru prints
are refered to as “blind”. Persons who have sight difficulties which do or does not completely
stop them from reading ordinary print when it is enlarged are refered to as having a “low vision”.

Different aspects a teacher can teach a child with visual impairment include;
Tactile and Pre-braille Training

(1) Tactile Training

Without vision, the children receive fragmentary information through their sense of touch and
form a concept of the 'whole' from the information of the 'parts'. Therefore, tactile training and
pre-braille training are very important to visually impaired children. In order to acquire sensory
acuity and efficiency, tactile training, manipulative play and art and craft activities are
emphasized.

(2) Pre-Braille Training

Through pre-braille training, the children learn to be sensitive to the positions of the six cells and
to distinguish the difference between dots and lines by using Peg Boards. When they are ready to
learn braille numbers, the English alphabet. Braille Boards are used for practice. In learning the
tone marks of characters, young children are taught to learn by chanting them to acquire
competence.
Braille
Braille is a tactile code which enables blind and vision impaired people to read. It uses the
alphabet and numbers but your child reads with their fingers. It’s based on 6 raised dots in 2
columns of 3.
Teachers can support a child to prepare to learn braille by:
developing fingertip sensitivity, for example playing with lots of different textures
building strong fingers, for example popping bubble wrap, squeezing Playdough
developing independent finger movement, for example playing with a keyboard
You can help your child learn braille by labelling things around your house in braille with a
braille label maker.
Mobility and Orientation
Before designing individual orientation and mobility training programs for visually impaired
children, special attention should be paid to their general health conditions, the presence of other
physical or sensory impairments and their individual learning difficulties. In order to enhance the
children's body image and spatial concept, and to facilitate the integration of sensory and self-
protective skills, the elements which address equilibrium, co-ordination, flexibility and agility
should be incorporated.

When planning a Mobility and Orientation program for children the focus of training may
include such things as:

sensory awareness: gaining information about the world through hearing, smell, touch and
proprioception
spatial concepts: realizing that objects exist even if not heard or felt, and understanding the
relationships which exist between objects in the environment
searching skills: locating items or places efficiently
independent movement: which includes crawling, rolling, walking, etc.
sighted guide: using another person to aid in travel
protective techniques: specific skills which provide added protection in unfamiliar areas
cane skills: use of various cane techniques to clear one's path or to locate objects along the way
Independent movement
Most children with visual impairments are capable of learning routes in familiar environments.
They learn to use landmarks and clues to help them know where they are along a particular route.
They learn specific adaptations to aid them in their movement. These might include
understanding that tactual markers on doorways identify the gym or the restroom, using an
adaptive mobility device or a cane to identify obstacles and drop-offs, or locating a street sign
using a monocular. A primary goal of orientation and mobility training is to help each child with
visual impairments achieve independent movement to as great a degree as possible.

Some children may be preparing to get a dog guide, or learning how to access public
transportation to get across town to a job. For children with additional disabilities, independent
movement might focus on traveling independently in a wheelchair, or learning how to help get
yourself into a van using a lift. It might mean helping the child learn to control the speed of
movement on his walker as he goes down a ramp.

Independent movement is tied to growth in other areas, such as communication and socialization.
For example, though a child may not be able to tell you he's hungry, if he can take you to the
kitchen you will probably understand that he wants something to eat or drink. Peers are more
likely to invite your daughter to go to the mall if she can keep up with the group by using sighted
guide technique or traveling with a cane. Going where we want when we want gives us control
and allows us to make choices.
Typing
Not only do touch typing skills offer visually impaired students a new medium for
communicating but just like mainstream students, touch typing also prepares them to compete in
different aspects of life.
many visually impaired students find it beneficial to work on a computer/laptop as font and font
size can be adjusted to suit individual needs. For Visually Impaired pupils, learning to touch type
early in school years is hugely beneficial, vastly increasing efficiency of computer usage and
quality and quantity of work produced.
Typing by touch and achieving muscle memory and automaticity is a key objective for many
support teachers working with Visually Impaired children.
Computer Literacy
When using the computer, visually impaired children have problems in perceiving visual
displays on the screen and the text of a hard copy in ink-print. They may also have difficulties in
keying data into the computer. To help the children cope with these problems, adaptations to the
syllabus for Computer Literacy is necessary. Additional time is required to teach the keyboard
skills and operations of special adaptive devices in order to get access to computers.

Training in the operation of computer access devices

The training is most important in that it gives visually impaired children access to the computer.
The children have to acquire the following skills in order to operate the computer: screen review
skills in braille or in visual enlargement, printing skills with a braille printer and the use of
optical character recognition techniques for transformation.
Since they have different degrees of vision, the children have to be trained to use one, or more,
of the following special adaptive devices before they can manipulate the different processes of a
computer system.
The biggest drawback in computer access technology for totally blind and severe low vision
children lies in their difficulties in gaining access to the graphics displayed on the computer
screen. The current practice is to transform indirectly video graphics to tactile graphics on a
braille printer with appropriate computer graphic programs. Since programming with LOGO
language involves quite a lot of graphics with reference to spatial relationship and orientation,
which are abstract to visually impaired children, this part of the curriculum should be cut short
and should only be briefly introduced. Basic programming skills with other computer languages
like BASIC are preferable to LOGO for totally blind and severe low vision children.
Communicative and Social Skills Training
Visually impaired children need particularly to learn communicative and social skills. The
teacher should provide them with sufficient opportunities for social interaction and exposure to
general knowledge and what happens around them both at school and at home. The teacher
should help them to develop a pleasant personality, a good body image and a proper way of
walking. Visually impaired children should also learn the rules of social courtesy e.g. to initiate
and maintain a conversation in a suitable tone and with appropriate facial expressions.
Self-care Skills Training
Since visually impaired children are unable to learn by observation, daily living skills need to be
learnt by actual practice. These skills include feeding, dressing, toileting, personal hygiene,
cleaning and cooking. These have to be taught right from the lowest class gradually up to senior
classes.

Physical impairment
Physical impairment refers to the inability to perform rapid coordinated movements due to
missing body parts or to damages nerves and muscles
Physical handicaps may cause various degrees of weaknesses and Inco-ordination of the limbs
which may affect mobility, posture and manual dexterity. Other physical problems such as heart
diseases may cause poor exercise tolerance and low level of physical fitness. All these may
directly result in pupils' difficulty to cope with ordinary school routine and limit their ability in
exploring and understanding the environment.
Teachers need to invest in teaching children with physical impairment the following skills.

Sekf-Awareness
Self-Awareness is the
thinking skill that
focuses on a child’s
ability to accurately
judge their own
performance and
behavior and to
respond appropriately
to different social
situations.
Self-Awareness helps
an individual to tune into their feelings, as well as to the behaviors and feelings of
others. For example, a child successfully uses self-awareness skills when they notice
they are talking too loudly in a library where other children are trying to work, and
then adjusts the volume or their voice to a more considerate level.
Self-Awareness is vital both to a child’s academic success as well as their social and
emotional growth. This thinking skill facilitates a child’s ability to accurately judge
their own performance and behavior, as well as their ability to appropriately respond
to different social situations.

Mobility and orientation

Personal mobility can equal freedom for the child that is physically disabled. It is this need for
personal freedom that drives these children to use whatever means necessary in attaining this
freedom.

For every child growing up, there is the need to “run away from Mommy and Daddy” or touch
and grab everything on a trip to the toy store; these physical freedoms may be taken for granted
by children that live without physical disabilities.

Without physical assistance, children with physical disabilities view activities such as playing in
the park or simply going to the toy store with their parents as monumental tasks. Through the
assistance of devices such as motorized scooters and wheelchairs, these children can have their
mobility and personal freedom improved for daily living.
Children with physical disabilities face different challenges everyday. The challenges for these
children can range from just standing up to just taking a few steps to their kitchen without having
the need for physical assistance.
For some children, the physical acts of standing up to walking require assistance and
determination to make those few precious steps.
Teachers can involve children with physical impairments in the following ways;
With the use of a scooter or wheelchair, a child with physical disabilities can have their
movement extended for performing various daily activities. There are many different variations
of mobility solutions to choose from in motorized and manual versions.

For children in the pre-school age group, the use of popular push button toy cars can make
excellent mobility solutions for outdoor play in harder to maneuver areas; areas such as home,
back or front yards, as well as, grass or sand filled parks would be areas to use such mobility
devices.

Motorized scooters and wheelchairs come with rechargeable batteries that can last up to 30
miles. Motorized scooters and wheelchairs do provide a significant advantage over their manual
counterparts. With less physical effort by the child, he or she can attain the mobility and freedom
when motorized over manual mobility devices are chosen for them.

Contacting a reputable mobility provider can begin the journey to mobility independence. A
reputable mobility provider will be able to measure, size and customize a mobility solution that
best fits the child’s needs. Most insurance carriers will now assist in purchasing the required
equipment for little or no expense out pocket.
On the journey to mobility and freedom, motorized scooters and wheelchairs are the tools to
finish that journey.

Although using scooters and wheelchairs in tight spaces may become physically challenging in
certain instances, this is a small inconvenience to having mobility independence. The addition of
these devices will enable children with physical disabilities a comfortable and satisfying method
to travel within and well beyond their own homes.
Social skills
Social skills are the skills we use every day to interact and communicate with others. They
include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and
body language. A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in
social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others.
Children with physical impairments have difficulties with social skills.
Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with
others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships. Social interactions
do not always run smoothly and an individual needs to be able to implement appropriate
strategies, such as conflict resolution when difficulties in interactions arise. It is also important
for individuals to have ’empathy’ that is, being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes
and recognize their feelings as it allows them to respond in an understanding and caring way to
how others are feeling.

Self -care skills

Independent living self care skills are the skills that a person needs on a daily basis to live
independently. They include self care skills like eating, dressing, bathing, toileting and
grooming.
Teaching independent living self care skills is a process that begins at birth and goes on into
adulthood. Children with disabilities find these skills difficult to perform for various different
reasons. However, they will need to acquire these skills as best they can to live as independently
as possible. Even if they cannot live independently, being independent in self care will take a lot
of burden off the caregivers. Thus, this is often the most important goal for a child with a
disability. That is why it is so important to plan independent living skills lessons for students
with disabilities. Here are some strategies you can use in your lessons to teach these skills.
Young children with disabilities often demonstrate delays in many areas of development.
Because of these delays, they may need additional help. In order for children to receive
acceptance and acquire as much independence as possible, it is important that self-care skills be a
focus during the preschool years.
Vocational skills
People with disabilities need skills to engage in livelihood activities. But they start with a
number of disadvantages. Their families and communities may assume that they are unable to
engage in such activities. They often lack access to basic education, making them unqualified to
join skills training courses. These disadvantages frequently result in a lack of skills, as well as
low confidence, expectations and achievement.
Children with physical impairments require instructional programs or courses that focus on the
skills required for a particular job function or trade. vocational skills provides hand-on, job-
specific instruction which enable them to become effective members of the community.
vocational skills are those which equip someone to undertake a particular task – how to produce
or repair something, or provide some kind of service. Examples are carpentry, tailoring, weaving,
metalwork, lathe operation, basket making, tinsmithing, shoemaking.

Mentally retarded
This is when someone has mental limitations in mental functioning. Here the child may have
problems in learning, communication and taking care of herself.
Mental retardation interferes with a child’s ability to store, process, or produce information, and
creates a “gap” between one’s ability and performance.
is characterized by a combination of deficits in both cognitive functioning and adaptive behavior.
Self -care skills
Independent living self care skills are the skills that a person needs on a daily basis to live
independently. They include self care skills like eating, dressing, bathing, toileting and
grooming.
Teaching independent living self care skills is a process that begins at birth and goes on into
adulthood. Children with disabilities find these skills difficult to perform for various different
reasons. However, they will need to acquire these skills as best they can to live as independently
as possible. Even if they cannot live independently, being independent in self care will take a lot
of burden off the caregivers. Thus, this is often the most important goal for a child with a
disability. That is why it is so important to plan independent living skills lessons for students
with disabilities. Here are some strategies you can use in your lessons to teach these skills.
Young children with disabilities often demonstrate delays in many areas of development.
Because of these delays, they may need additional help. In order for children to receive
acceptance and acquire as much independence as possible, it is important that self-care skills be a
focus during the preschool years.
Social skills
Social skills are the skills we use every day to interact and communicate with others. They
include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and
body language. A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in
social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others.
Children with physical impairments have difficulties with social skills.
Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with
others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships. Social interactions
do not always run smoothly and an individual needs to be able to implement appropriate
strategies, such as conflict resolution when difficulties in interactions arise. It is also important
for individuals to have ’empathy’ that is, being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes
and recognize their feelings as it allows them to respond in an understanding and caring way to
how others are feeling.

Sekf-Awareness
Self-Awareness is the
thinking skill that
focuses on a child’s
ability to accurately
judge their own
performance and
behavior and to
respond appropriately
to different social
situations.
Self-Awareness helps
an individual to tune into their feelings, as well as to the behaviors and feelings of
others. For example, a child successfully uses self-awareness skills when they notice
they are talking too loudly in a library where other children are trying to work, and
then adjusts the volume or their voice to a more considerate level.
Self-Awareness is vital both to a child’s academic success as well as their social and
emotional growth. This thinking skill facilitates a child’s ability to accurately judge
their own performance and behavior, as well as their ability to appropriately respond
to different social situations.

Vocational skills
People with disabilities need skills to engage in livelihood activities. But they start with a
number of disadvantages. Their families and communities may assume that they are unable to
engage in such activities. They often lack access to basic education, making them unqualified to
join skills training courses. These disadvantages frequently result in a lack of skills, as well as
low confidence, expectations and achievement.
Children with physical impairments require instructional programs or courses that focus on the
skills required for a particular job function or trade. vocational skills provides hand-on, job-
specific instruction which enable them to become effective members of the community.
vocational skills are those which equip someone to undertake a particular task – how to produce
or repair something, or provide some kind of service. Examples are carpentry, tailoring, weaving,
metalwork, lathe operation, basket making, tinsmithing, shoemaking.
Communication Skills
Communication is absolutely essential to successful school participation, and yet students with
severe disabilities often struggle with even basic communication skills. Many students with
severe disabilities will receive speech therapy, but speech therapy alone is not enough to
effectively teach communication. The teacher must intentionally, consistently, and creatively
teach communication skills throughout the entire school day. Let's talk about some strategies.
Teachers may use low-tech supports such as pictures, mid-tech voice output devices, or high-
tech computer communication systems.
Language impairement
A Language impairment is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic learning processes
involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language.
Language impairment may include problems with;
-Articulation | speech impairments where the child produces sounds incorrectly (e.g.,
lisp, difficulty articulating
certain sounds, such as “l” or
“r”);

-Fluency | speech impairments

where a child’s flow of speech
is disrupted by sounds,
syllables, and words that are
repeated, prolonged, or
avoided and where there may
be silent blocks or inappropriate inhalation, exhalation, or
phonation patterns;

-Voice | speech impairments

where the child’s voice has an
abnormal quality to its pitch,
resonance, or loudness; an
Gifted and Talented

Skills for leaners affected by language impairment include;

Functional communication skills
Functional communication refers to the most basic of communication skills. This type of
communication gets one’s basic wants and needs known, such as “I want that”, “I am hurt”, or “I
need to use the bathroom”. These are not complex thoughts and they are often the first types of
messages that children begin to communicate.

For most children, functional communication begins to emerge in the first year of life with
gestures and is expanded on in the following years with words and later, simple sentences.
However, for children with speech and language delays, this may happen much later. Children
with significant language impairments may still be working on obtaining functional
communication when they are much older.
Teachers will be able to teach appropriate methods of communication to children with language
impairment such as;
Gestures and Body Language:
The child can use gestures and body language to communicate what he wants and how he is
feeling. The child may point to or reach for desired objects or lead an adult to what he wants.
He may communicate his displeasure with something by frowning or slumping and may
communicate joy through smiles and laughter. This is the most basic form of communication
and it should most definitely be acknowledged for this children so they don’t feel like they are
trapped with no means of communicating. You can say things like “Your body is telling me that
you are mad. I’m so sorry that you can’t….”

Sign Language:
Children who are unable to speak can often use simple signs to communicate their basic wants
and needs. These will need to be taught to the child and the adults that will be communicating
with that child.

Typing skills
typing programs should be designed to teach typing skills to children who have a hard time
expressing themselves verbally.
Learning to touch type brings many additional benefits to individuals with language impairment,
and is often an invaluable or even life changing skill, learning early benefits reading, spelling
comprehension and vocabulary. It greatly reduces the need for handwriting, which is commonly
a disliked or a challenging area, and errors can be corrected easily without original mistakes
being apparent

Social language skills

social language skills that people use in day to day interactions, pragmatics is basically the way
we say something, how we say it, the body language we use, and whether it is appropriate in the
given situation. It is a vital communication skill where we express our thoughts, ideas, and
feelings.

The three main skills of social communication

There are three main skills in communicating socially.

The first is our ability to use language. This refers to the skill to use language for different
purposes such as greeting, informing, demanding, promising or requesting.

The second skill is the ability to adapt language. This skill allows the person to change the way
they speak according to the listener or the situation.

The ability to follow the ‘unspoken’ rules of conversation and storytelling is the third important
aspect of social communication. This includes letting others know when you start talking, taking
turns when having a conversation, and staying on topic. This ability also allows the speaker to
find other ways of saying what they mean when the other person doesn’t understand what was
said. This skill employs the use of facial expressions or body language, eye contact, and knowing
the appropriate distance to be from someone when talking to them.

It is important to teach children with language impairment social language skills so that they
know how to understand the person with whom they are communicating. Teachers should ensure
that these children are able to decipher the conversational rules when talking to people from
other cultures or backgrounds as it differs from culture to culture, within cultures, and even
within different families.
Social skills.
Social skills are the skills we use every day to interact and communicate with others. They
include verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression and
body language. A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in
social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others.
Children with physical impairments have difficulties with social skills.
Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with
others. Many of these skills are crucial in making and sustaining friendships. Social interactions
do not always run smoothly and an individual needs to be able to implement appropriate
strategies, such as conflict resolution when difficulties in interactions arise.
It is also important for individuals to have ’empathy’ that is, being able to put yourself into
someone else’s shoes and recognize their feelings as it allows them to respond in an
understanding and caring way to how others are feeling.
The gifted and talented.
Gifted and talented children are those who perform at a remarkably high level of
accomplishment when compared to others of the same age.
Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels in their ability to reason and
learn, as well as to perform in one or more domains such as mathematics, music, language,
sensorimotor skills for example painting, danceand sports.

such students often languish in school unless teachers can provide them with more than the
challenges of the usual curriculum. For example, A kindergarten child who is precociously
advanced in reading, she, may make little further progress at reading if her teachers do not
recognize and develop her skill; her talent may effectively disappear from view as her peers
gradually catch up to her initial level.
Without accommodation to their unusual level of skill or knowledge, students who are gifted or
talented can become bored by school, and eventually the boredom can even turn into behavior
problems.
Partly for these reasons, students who are gifted or talented have been regarded as the
responsibility of special education, along with students with other sorts of impairments.
Skills a teacher can teach these gifted and talented leanrners include;

Executive Functioning.
Executive function is a set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and
self-control. We use these skills every day to learn, work, and manage daily life. Trouble with
executive function can make it hard to focus, follow directions, and handle emotions, among
other things.
While most gifted students excel academically, many have significant Executive functioning
challenges. Some of these may include managing time, paying attention, and following
directions. The problem is compounded because the students often don’t need any of these skills
in their early school years — the work in typical mixed-ability schools is so easy for them that it
takes nearly no time, effort, or even looking at the instructions at the top of a worksheet for them
to complete work successfully. So when their peers are learning all of these things alongside
their elementary spelling and arithmetic homework, the gifted child is instead rewarded with
academic success without developing these skills at all.
“How can she be so smart and forget to turn in her schoolwork?”, “His homework is always
correct, but it takes him forever to get started!”, “Her work is excellent, but I don’t know how
she can find it in that mess of a desk!”
It isn’t uncommon for high-ability learners to struggle with executive functions. Sometimes it
may be a result of asynchronous development. Other times, students who skate through school
develop bad habits that then become executive functioning deficits when the rubber hits the road
in older grades.
Many gifted children find learning and school to initially be very easy, sometimes even boring.
When it comes to developing executive functioning skills, though, there really is a downside to
school being “too easy.” If you are able to easily understand your lessons, memorize the key
details, and recall them later, there is no need to develop a set of study skills. This phenomenon
isn’t limited to studying either. If a student can memorize all of their assignments throughout
grade school and never needs to write them down, he/she never has the opportunity to learn and
practice assignment management.
Executive functioning skills to tach gifted children include;
Adaptable Thinking
Adaptable thinking gives a child the ability to problem solve or adjust to situations when
necessary and overcome instantaneous obstacles. This skill also applies to a child’s ability to see
things from someone else’s perspective. A child who exhibits this type of cognitive thinking isn’t
stumped by everyday hurdles or a difference in opinion. An example of adaptable thinking is a
child who encounters a roadblock on their walk to school and devises an alternate route.

Planning
A child’s ability to think about the future, create a plan of action, and prioritize the different
working parts is a strong sign of cognitive development. Planning skills allow a child to make a
list of operations designed to effectively accomplish a task and to adequately determine which
aspects are the most important. Some examples of planning are making a packing list, giving
directions, or writing a recipe.

Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring involves a child’s ability to self-evaluate or comprehend how well he or she is
performing a specific task. Self-monitoring helps children track and reflect on their progress
regarding a specific assignment and understand that adjustments may need to be made to
accomplish the task at hand. An example of positive self-monitoring is when a child identifies
that a mathematics formula isn’t producing the desired results, and checks their work to discover
the error.

Self-Control
Self-control addresses a child’s ability to restrain from physical or emotional outbursts. Impulse
control keeps a child from reacting or acting without thinking, while emotional control helps a
child to remain calm and resist the urge to overreact or shutdown due to criticism or obstacles.
An example of effective self-control in terms of executive function is when a child receives a
disappointing score on a test, but maintains focus and absorbs the constructive criticism while
staying level-headed and learning from the mistakes.

Working Memory
Working memory involves a child’s ability to retain and store learned information and then later
put it to use. This skill is crucial to a child’s success in the classroom, as it is responsible for
short-term memory and execution. A strong working memory is exhibited by a child who
successfully remembers and executes the instructions for a step-by-step drill in gym class.

Time Management
Time management concerns a child’s ability to properly organize a schedule, complete tasks on
time, and maintain patience throughout assignments. Time management is imperative for a child
in an array of scenarios as it facilitates the ability to jump from task to task and enhances
productivity, punctuality, and goal setting skills. An example of good time management is the
completion of a multi-step project before the deadline without rushing or compromising on
quality.

Organization
Organization skills addresses a child’s ability to efficiently arrange materials or thoughts in an
orderly fashion. Organization is vital to a child’s growth and development as it allows them to
tell a succinct story or keep track of possessions. Efficient organization is displayed when a child
designates a distinct folder or notebook to each school subject or consistently maintains any sort
of systematic method.