8 things I've learned about Special Education Needs this summer

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Last week I was involved in another Train the Trainer course (Summer School) organised by the British Council in partnership with the Ministry of Education of Israel. The focus was Special Education Needs, and I had the privilege to work together with top expert in the field, Aharona Gvaryahu, MOE National Counselor for Students with Learning Difficulties, who was my co-trainer. While my role was sharing my knowledge and experience in designing and delivering teacher training workshops, my co-trainer as well as the participants of the course were a source of number of interesting insights into Special education, which I would like to share below:

ADHD is more prevalent among boys than girls.

A variety of activities, while generally recommended for Special Ed pupils, can at the same time be overwhelming

There are no weak learners - there are less successful learners

People with dyslexia may have trouble keeping time.

Using yellow paper for handouts and worksheets (black on yellow rather than black on white) is recommended for people with dyslexia

Classroom practices and materials which work well for students with dyslexia will work excellently for all pupils because dyslexia-friendly teaching is good teaching

VAK learning styles are indeed baloney (see Russell Mayne's blog post HERE)

Education tries to change present-oriented individuals (i.e. children are mainly concerned with here and now) into future-oriented ones (e g.by teaching that smoking or drugs are not good for you because it would harm your future)

But, as my co-trainer had warned, the course, while comprehensively covering various special education needs, somewhat lacked specific EFL/ESL needs of special ed pupils - which, as you can see, is also missing from my list. So if you have experience teaching EFL to learners with special needs or - perhaps you were one of the participants on the summer course - can you suggest a couple of tips or share an insight on special ed pupils and language learning (vocabulary + grammar) to make the above list up to ten?

For other posts related to various summer schools I've taken part in, see the following:

Baku: Beautiful but Undiscovered

Does Digital Mean Better?

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