Question

How would you go about identifying children with special needs in ECE settings?

ECE (early childhood education)

Answer 1

Identification of children with special needs in ECE settings:

Early childhood education settings are the settings, specially designed for the care and education of 3, 4 and 5 year old children. The main places for ECE are nursery, child care and day care centers, or kindergarten classrooms.  

Children with special needs refers to the children, who have difficulties or disability in communication and learning and also the children, who have not yet achieved certain mile stones of infancy and toddlerhood. ECE settings are a one of the best place ,  where a health professional or a parent or teacher or a care taker can identify the children with special meeds easily.

Identication of Children with special needs:

* Care takers or the health professionals should have the basic idea about the children with special needs , such as children who have difficulty in :

- Movement

- communication

- decision making

- self care

and also children who is suffering with

- speech and language problems

- Autism

- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder

- Chromosomal dosorders like Down Syndrome

- Epilepsy

- Mental retardation

- vision and hearing impairments

* Children with special needs may manifest following behaviour:

Learning and difficulty with cognitive abilities:

- May have considerable difficulty in understanding and grasping the content in the subjects ( languages, maths)

- Take much longer time in learning new practices or learning.

- Difficulty in copy words, makes mistakes in copying.

- easily forgetting words to write and read , even after repeated practicing.

Children with impaired sensory ability

- Visually impaired child may hold the object too close or too far from them, they may reach for the object beyond or infront of it, tilting or turning head when he uses his eyes and frequent complaints that he can't see what teacher is writing on the board.

- Difficulty in articulating words and sentences, stuttering and absence of speech may may indicate deafness or dumbness in the child.

Children, who have impairment in gross and fine motor skills:

- fall easily , when walking and running and who poor balance .

- week muscle tone and poor movement coordination

- Difficulty in tying shoe laces, buttoning up clothes .

- Spilling much water when pouring into a container from a glass.

Children , who have problems with attention:

(Children under 5 years can concentrate their attention 2 to 5 minutes. ( Children under 3 years, will be difficult to control their attention)).

- Unable to follow instructions, and can't concentrate while talking with others.

- Difficulty in concentrating on classes, frequent distractions.

- Hyperactivity , fidgeting with legs and restless in the seat.

* impatient, lack of self control, leaving their seats, climbing up and down.

Every child is unique in his growth , development and skills but considerable impairment or difference in accordance with the age , should be taken seriously. Those children need special care because the have special needs.