GRADUATE Course – Understanding Special Learning Populations
| Average Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Five Stars | |
“Today the chances are good that you know someone with autism or autism – like characteristics.”
“Have you ever come across a child who’s always on the move? They might have ADHD.”
“Gifted learners have competencies and abilities that go two or more years beyond their grade and/or age level.”
1 Graduate Credit
- Grading: A-F
- Materials: Included in the course fee!
- Graduate Credit: 1 Graduate Credit
- Instruction Mode: Self-paced, Asynchronous (Online Class)
- Time Frame: Enroll and start any time
See inside this course…
Course Description:
As educators, we all face situations where we accommodate students with special needs in our classrooms. In such situations, how can we modulate our teaching to ensure that we reach each and every child? This integrated course, Understanding Special Learning Populations is designed to help educators encourage and maximize each child’s potential.
Terms like Autism, ADHD, learning disability and gifted learners are being constantly used. What do they mean? What makes these children unique? And most importantly, how as an educator can you enhance these students’ learning ability? These are questions that are answered in this course.
The integrated course has three sections, each one dedicated to a particular special population: SECTION A, Introduction to Autism, SECTION B, Differentiation for Gifted Learners in the Classroom and SECTION C, Understanding ADHD. The course presents various strategies, adaptations and modifications to the environment and the mode of instruction that help educators accommodate and teach students with these conditions. Along with enhancing an educator’s skills, the course is rich and filled with ideas and suggestions that promote confidence in handling children of differing abilities.
Objectives & Outcomes:
As a result of successful participation in SECTION A, Introduction to Autism, students should be able to:
- Recognize the symptoms of autism.
- Understand the range of conditions similar to autism.
- Correlate the deficits in autism with the characteristics of the brain in autism.
- Gain knowledge about the management of autism.
- Understand the Theory of Mind and its relation to development of thinking in autism.
- Identify the stage of thinking a student with autism is in, and communicate with them accordingly.
- Understand characteristics of language and communication in autism.
- Communicate effectively with, and teach a student with autism.
- Facilitate social interaction in the classroom, for a student with autism.
- Understand the symptoms of autism, and strategies to accommodate students having the various symptoms.
- Create an autism-friendly physical environment in the classroom.
- Plan classroom schedules for a class which has a student with autism.
- Manage behavior issues regarding a student with autism who may present in the classroom.
- Modify teaching materials and strategies to better reach a student with autism.
- Work together with parents and the larger team in accommodating a student with autism.
As a result of successful participation in SECTION B, Differentiation for Gifted Learners in the Classroom, students should be able to:
- Understand characteristics of gifted learners.
- Identify gifted learners in the classroom.
- Recognize needs of gifted learners.
- Support gifted learners to help them achieve overall development.
- Differentiate curriculum to suit the needs of gifted learners.
- Compact curriculum for gifted learners.
- Understand and identify twice-exceptional students.
- Support twice-exceptional students.
- Assess mastery of content.
- Understand and implement tiered instruction.
As a result of successful participation in SECTION C, Understanding ADHD, students should be able to:
- Understand and identify symptoms of ADHD.
- Understand prognosis, treatment and causes of ADHD.
- Facilitate concentration and focus while teaching students with ADHD.
- Prevent hyperactivity and impulsivity related issues in the classroom through organization and scheduling.
- Enable students with ADHD to learn effectively by teaching them organizational strategies.
- Motivate students with ADHD.
- Facilitate social interaction in students with ADHD.
- Create a classroom physical environment that facilitates focus in students with ADHD.
- Create a classroom schedule for students with ADHD.
- Modify assessment to accommodate a student with ADHD.
Special Instructions:
After completing the course, you will be directed to the university for registration.
Excellent experience! Thank you!
I found this course to have a lot of great resources included in the content. I am hoping to utilize them in my teaching.
overall great experience
Very helpful and positive! thank you!!
Very satisfied!
This was a great first online course experience. I will be signing up for more courses.
It was great and I'm planning to take more classes!
Great course!
I really learned a lot from this course and found the information timely since I have a student with ADHD.
I really enjoyed this class. I thought the material was valuable and practical. I would recommend it to anyone in public school teaching! Jane D.
I really enjoyed this course. This class furthered my knowledge in the subject areas and is helpful in and out of the classroom!
Taking the course Understanding Special Learning Populations was an extremely positive experience for me. Not only did I learn a tremendous amount, I found the customer service and support from the Professional Learning Board staff outstanding! I look forward to taking more courses with you in the future.
This course was exactly what I needed. The online course was easy to navigate and the content was very interesting. Thanks you!
I thought this was perfect for me, I would love to have a book or hard copy so that I can keep looking for the information to use in my classroom.
A pleasant experience....
Thank you very much for putting together such an wonderful course!
Thank you for your positive approach.
I enjoyed this class!