MUSICAL CHAIRS

Asperger in the classrooms of primary education

(María Jiménez)

The current education system promotes a personalized education where the teacher is a guide in the process of learning and teaching. He has to know their students, their characteristics, peculiarities, interests and difficulties to help them to have a correct development.

Teachers should follow some guidelines in the classroom to adapt the learning process to the needs of these children.

In a cognitive level:

The teacher must ensure that the child has understood the tasks through questions to check it. He should provide additional explanations simplifying the complex concepts.
Divide the goals into smaller parts.
The sentences have to be clear and simple in activities or exams.
Avoid overstimulation because these children are easily distracted.
Avoid mechanical and repetitive work, the teacher should encourage tasks to internalize and interpret and so understand what memorized. Because they have the ability to memorize large amount of information but have difficulty to manage memories.
Increased focus on learning methodology in a visual way. It is how they get much information due to their high visual acuity.
To create them a routine, with steps they take them every time when they do an activity. For example:

To read slowly all questions.
To think if I have any doubts and if so I wonder it.
To start with the question that is the best for me.
To check the time I have and how many questions left me.
I leave the most difficult question for last.
Review examination or activity before submission.

These children operated time badly, it is necessary to help them through calendars, task lists, with a clock, etc.
They can talk for hours about their interests so we know their tastes to approach problems and classroom activities, in this way we create them motivation indirectly.

In a communicative level:

They don´t understand the message when the teacher speaks for the group because they are considered within the group therefore it needs to be repeated individually and make a summary of the main ideas, trying to be concrete.
It is necessary to teach them the keys, the social rules, "what to say and how to say".
Use videos starring him daily situations to teach aspects that should improve.

In a socio-affective level:

The greatest difficulty is that this children don´t know how to socialize, so they have difficult to establish friendly relations, they don’t get follow a conversation, they don’t appreciate nonverbal signals and body gestures.

Is a good idea to create problems through visual tiles where they have to find the answer. For example:

Mom hurts her stomach, what should she do?

- To drink coke and eat sweets.

- To visit the doctor and rest.

- To go to the park.

With the help of his partners to teach them what is the appropriate behavior.
It is beneficial to the child to have a peer tutor, a friend in class, who help him in moments that make him stress as the break, in the school bus, corridors, etc. And try to help him his social integration.
To make him a circle of friends, first with few members, who can protect him from jokes and increase the group gradually. The child with Asperger wants to make friends but he doesn’t know how.
They tend to get angry and be aggressive in situations that supposed them stress. The teacher should help to recognize their emotions and teach to manage them.

In a physical level:

Children with Asperger have difficulties in coordination, they are stiff when they walk, they are clumsy in physical games. These problems may affect the writing and drawing so the teacher should help more in these tasks and let more time on tests and activities.
They have an auditory hypersensitivity, so it is necessary to minimize the annoying noises in the classroom.
They respond badly to physical contact. The teacher can avoid, as far as possible, by placing on one side of the class not in the center, to be the first or the last in the row, always avoid the crowds. If contact is necessary, he talks him before to explain the situation in order that it isn’t a surprise.

The primary teacher plays a key role in the success of a proper adaptation of teaching and learning process to the specific needs of an asperger child. This adaptation is a complex process which involves good knowledge of the disorder to be able to work. It is also necessary to know the characteristics can present the student, possible difficulties and aspects that can promote.