Ch 5: Supporting Students with Communication Disorders
About This Chapter
Supporting Students with Communication Disorders - Chapter Summary
Our instructors have created this chapter to discuss the ways in which teachers can better support their students with communication disorders. Some of the topics that will be addressed are as follows:
- Building relationships with students and families
- Learner-centered classroom structures
- Connecting student needs to learning programs
- Teaching strategies and approaches for students with communication disorders
Each lesson provides clear instruction about the different techniques teachers can use to build a more supportive environment for this particular student population. Many of the lessons include examples that can be instantly implemented into your classroom. Additionally, while these lessons provide teaching resources for individual educators, they can also be used as part of a professional development training program for your school site or for your district.
How It Helps
- Builds awareness: In these lessons you will find out about the challenges that students with communication disorders face every day, and by having a better understanding of what your students are going through, you will learn how to more effectively meet their needs.
- Access to resources: If you have never dealt with students who have communication disorders, you may be at a loss for how to handle this issue, but this chapter gives you all the information you need in one, easy-to-navigate location.
- Enhances student understanding: By discovering how to create a classroom that uses different teaching strategies, you may simultaneously help your students become more academically successful.
Skills Covered
By the completion of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe the necessity of knowing your students
- Understand key strategies for working with students and families
- Identify the connection between culture and variations in language
- Improve how student needs are met in the classroom
- Analyze the fundamentals of diverse learning needs
- Define how these students benefit from supportive classroom environments
- Examine differentiated instruction in the classroom
- Explain how to incorporate assistive technology for communication disorders

1. The Importance of Knowing Your Students
In creating a learner-centered classroom, there is little more important than knowing your students. This lesson details why it is so important that you get to know your students and ways this impacts learning.

2. Strategies for Working with Families of Students
From the first day of school, it becomes clear that each student enters the classroom with a unique worldview, generally instilled in them by their family. In this lesson, we'll discuss some general strategies for bringing students' families into the educational conversation.

3. Variations in Language Across Cultures
Language varies from culture to culture. Even within the same language, there are differences in how it is spoken. Watch this video lesson to learn some of the ways English differs in different cultures.

4. Meeting Student Needs in the Classroom
Effective teachers design curriculum and learning activities with individual student needs in mind. This lesson details how students' needs, backgrounds, perspectives, and interests can be reflected in a learning program.

5. Understanding Diverse Learning Needs
Students each have unique skills, abilities, and needs that need to be addressed. This lesson will explain several ways students can be different from one another and how you can tailor your instruction to address their needs.

6. Supportive Classroom Environments for Students with Communication Disorders
Students with communication disorders may be at a significant disadvantage in a regular classroom environment because of the specific challenges they face. Teachers can set their students up for success by adapting the classroom environment.

7. Differentiated Instruction: Adapting the Learning Environment for Students
Differentiated instruction is a great strategy that teachers use to accommodate a wide variety of learning needs. In this lesson, we discuss differentiated instruction and identify which aspects of the classroom can be differentiated.

8. Assistive Technology for Communication Disorders
Students with communication disorders often have difficulty participating in classroom activities because of their inability to make simple needs and wants known. This article discusses tools and assistive technologies that can be used in the classroom for students with communication disorders.
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Other Chapters
Other chapters within the Teaching Students with Communication Disorders course