I am an ALT in Japan and I'm teaching special needs classes to elementary school students. I have lots of experience teaching elementarty students however I have only been teaching the special needs classes since April.

I am finding that I have had to simplify my activities and specially tailor each of my classes as I am teaching at a variety of schools. I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience in this field? I'm looking for someone to talk to about this area, share activities, collaborate and discuss any other problems or concerns.

Thanks,
Allan

Teaching special is fun but could prove to be difficult. Why? Because it depends on the type and level of the special need for each child. I found that doing crafts was a great way to keep thier attention as well as having fun. Sure many don't have the skills to cut,color,draw,glue and so on but maybe you can divide the craft and assign a student to do a task that they can do so that everyone contributes to the final product. Games are difficult because some students have physical needs that would prohibit thier participation. Good luck and remember what is important is that they have fun as they do things in a different language.

Hello,

An ALT from Nagasaki, who also happens to be a qualified teacher in the UK, very kindly wrote up this article, which may be of some use to you:

http://www.genkienglish.net/specialneedseducation.htm

There are also some links to Japanese info sources to show to the JTEs.

Hope this helps,

Be genki,

Richard