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Date
24 April 2024
Link
inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/down-syndrome-and-learning/support-processing-and-organisation-skills-2

Support processing and organisation skills

Suggestion for implementing the strategy ‘Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13’

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Support concentration and memory

Support concentration and memory

Provide options to support concentration and short-term memory.

  • Monitor and moderate the classroom for visual and auditory distractions.
  • Present information in a range of ways over an extended period of time (for example, a week) to help students retain information, build up their understanding and familiarity of the topic, and stay stimulated and focused.
  • Discuss with students the effectiveness of the learning environment and remove barriers and make modifications where needed.
  • In online environments, make effective use of visual prompts and cues to support understanding and navigation. Make useful hyperlinks to background knowledge or previous learning to increase connections.
  • Schedule regular short breaks to allow students to move physically.

Offer visual timers

Offer visual timers

Visual timers, can help students "see" the time they have for a task.

This can reduce stress and increase motivation.

Video hosted on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/27596627

Source: Time Timer (US) (opens in a new tab/window)

No captions or transcript

Source:
Time Timer (US)
http://vimeo.com/27596627

Support planning and organisation

Support planning and organisation

Help students to be more independent by providing tools that support planning and organisation.

  • Use charts, visual calendars, colour coded schedules, visible timers and cues to increase the predictability of regular activities and transitions.
  • Encourage students to use their mobile devices to schedule alerts and reminders for regular and novel events and task deadlines.
  • Model and make available graphic organisers and flow charts to support planning and thinking in all curriculum areas.
  • Break tasks and lengthy assignments into small, manageable parts. Schedule workflow using Trello to organise what needs to be done and when.
  • Provide options so that students can submit work online.

Support thinking and pattern recognition

Support thinking and pattern recognition

Use tools and approaches to help students to recognise patterns, critical features, big ideas and relationships.
  • Use visuals — graphics, photos, cartoons, pictures — to support text and talk when explaining anything.
  • Offer 3D virtual and physical models and real objects to help students identify critical features.
  • Use mind maps, flowcharts, and outlines to help students unpack big ideas and relationships.
  • Give students multiple opportunities to engage with new ideas and concepts.
  • Provide extra time for students to think and process before they need to respond in a discussion.
  • Use mindmaps to brainstorm ideas.
  • Support group and class discussions with visual annotations to prompt later recall of key ideas.
  • Make thinking tools and approaches available across all curriculum areas.

Useful resources

Useful resources

Website

UDL Curriculum toolkit: Building Flexible, Customizable Learning Environments

This resource was developed to facilitate the creation of flexible UDL instructional materials. The Toolkit software enables any curriculum developer or researcher to design web-based curricula or interventions — from scratch, as well as to retrofit existing curricula into a UDL-supported, scaffolded learning environment for middle and high school students.

Publisher: CAST

Visit website

Website

Free graphic organiser templates

Free graphic organiser templates in pdf format.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Visit website

Website

Time Timer (visual timer for visual people!)

For many students being able to see a visual representation of time passing can really support their time management. This video explains how time timer works.

Publisher: Time Timer

Visit website

Next steps

More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13”:

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