Content enhancement strategies are very useful for teaching students with learning problems at the secondary levels. The teachers use the techniques to promote learning among the students with both disabilities and those without. They chose the best technique which can be applied in the content areas they are covering. It makes it easier for students with disabilities to participate in the learning and also understand what is being taught.
Content enhancement techniques make students more actively involved. For an effective outcome, a teacher may use different techniques which are helpful in a lesson to ensure that the learning objective is achieved. For instance, if a teacher uses the advanced organizer so that the students for the next lesson, they will prepare for it by analyzing the content provided. During the lesson, the teacher can use a graphic organizer if it is effective for the areas he/she want to cover. The employment of these strategies will both enable the students with special needs to participate in the class activities like asking and answering questions and also understand well what is being taught. They will be able to connect what they learned in the advanced organizer and what the teacher is telling them. Learning will be easy and efficient using the content enhancement techniques in the content areas.
The content enhancement techniques enable teachers to focus on what is important for the particular lesson he/she is teaching. Every teacher develops a learning objective for every lesson in a unit. There are usually important areas which should be focused on to ensure that the objectives are achieved. As the students with special needs may find it challenging to understand what is being taught using the ordinary teaching methods, content enhancements solve the problem in a way. For instance, if the teacher uses the graphic organizer he will just state what is important and try to make it simpler for the students to understand. In the classification of animals graphic organizer on for instance making food, it is clear that animals do not make their food, plants make own food and fungus do not make own good (Sencibaugh F.2). The information is important, easy to understand and specific and this makes learning for students with disabilities easy.
Cooperative learning is the technique that I believe is the most useful content enhancement strategy. The technique does not only enhance learning but also social skills for the students with learning challenges. I would use it in the classroom by first pre-teaching the students on social skills and then group them into three and task each according to their ability so that I can have a mixed ability grouping. As they work on the tasks given I would monitor them to determine both the group and individual student learning needs and intervene where appropriate. I would regularly redirect the students towards the learning tasks as I monitor them. I would also reteach the concepts so that they can understand and be able to remember them in the future by summarizing them using a PowerPoint presentation with the help of the auditory devices. The reason why I would use the strategy is that students have increased opportunities for practice on skills, articulating ideas freely and responding when there is a need. The interaction and discussion session makes it easy for the teacher to determine the learning needs of each student. As the students interact they also learn to accommodate each other despite their ability and disabilities thus improve self-confidence and esteem of the students with disabilities.
Work Cited
Sencibaugh, Joseph M. "A Synthesis of Content Enhancement Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning Problems at the Secondary Level." Online Submission (2005).
