What is special education?
Special Education refers to a tailored approach to learning that accommodates the unique pace and specific needs of each child. This involves specialized programs and methods that are qualitatively different from those typically offered in mainstream schools.
The basic pillars and objectives of special education include:
- School Readiness: This encompasses communication skills, psychological understanding, mental development, emotional regulation, and foundational school knowledge.
- School Skills: reading, writing, mathematics and social integration.
- Social Adaptation: Focus on developing autonomy and appropriate social behavior.
- Pre-professional Readiness: This area covers pre-professional skills and vocational orientation, preparing students for future employment opportunities.
Special education enhances, supports, and reinforces the standard curriculum. It’s recognized that a significant portion of the student population struggles to meet conventional school demands. This necessitates the development of specialized educational programs and teaching methods to ensure these children aren’t left behind in the learning process.
At Speech & Communication, our focus is on boosting the child’s capabilities to enable seamless participation in the school curriculum. Parents play an active role in our programs, gaining a deeper understanding of their children’s abilities, positively addressing their emotions regarding their challenges, and acquiring the skills to assist them effectively.
We possess various assessment tools, including:
- The Greek WISC-III (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III), a comprehensive tool for evaluating children’s cognitive abilities.
- The Athena Test, a specialized assessment instrument.
- PATEM (I-IV) questionnaires, designed for evaluating self-perception and self-esteem in students from 1st to 3rd grade.
- The Greek ADHD Rating Scales, tailored for assessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms.
We enhance the sessions to make them engaging and enjoyable through various approaches:
- Pictorial Methods
- Kinesthetic Activities
- Interactive Smart Board Games
- Specialized Written Material
- Specialized Electronic Programs
In Greece, special education is often associated in the minds of most people with learning difficulties, particularly dyslexia. For this reason, we provide a relevant overview below:
The term ‘Dyslexia’ refers to specific learning difficulties (LD) in reading and writing that are not linked to other organic or intellectual disorders. It is more accurate to view dyslexia as a difference in learning abilities rather than a disability.
A Short Guide to Detecting Learning Difficulties/Dyslexia:
READING
If you observe five or more of the following behaviors in your child, consider contacting a specialist for a more detailed evaluation of their abilities:
- Demonstrates a slow reading rate.
- Frequently spells or rhymes incorrectly.
- Skips syllables, words, or entire lines while reading.
- Adds extra syllables or words that are not in the text.
- Misreads words.
- Reverses vowels or syllables.
- Substitutes one word for another with a similar meaning.
- Struggles to analyze syllables and words letter by letter.
- Finds it challenging to compose syllables and letters into words.
- Shows poor comprehension of the text being read.
WRITING
If your child displays five or more of the following behaviors, a specialist’s evaluation of their abilities is advised:
- Their writing is disorganized and difficult to read.
- Writes incorrect letters and/or words.
- Omits vowels and/or whole syllables.
- Repeats phonemes or syllables.
- Transposes vowels within words.
- Skips or overuses accents in words.
- Fails to leave spaces between words.
- Inconsistently uses uppercase letters among lowercase letters.
- Makes numerous spelling errors.
- Exhibits significant errors when copying from the board.
BEHAVIOR
If three or more of the following behaviors are evident in your child, consider seeking a professional evaluation of their abilities:
- Difficulty distinguishing between left and right.
- Confusion in understanding the concept of time (e.g., before-after, yesterday-tomorrow).
- Challenges in time management.
- Mixes up the order of days and/or months.
- Struggles with the sequence of the alphabet.
- Difficulty in pre-school activities.
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