Helping Children with Down Syndrome

 Helping Children with Down Syndrome

For the second half of this year one of my roles has been to work one on one with a student in daily focussed sessions, providing her with reading, writing and maths tasks to support her I.E.P: Individual Education Plan.  I have embraced this role with prior knowledge and experience working in this role as well as having worked with her previous support teacher to aide a smooth transition process. The student I am working with has Down syndrome and while her IEP goals are specific and provide a clear path for learning, there is also other factors that I have decided to spend some time considering.

I have recently read an article from the Champion centre about helping students with Down syndrome to achieve their full potential in primary school. Like any learners we work with, the more we understand a student as an individual learner the more we can do to optimise their learning. Students with Down syndrome will have developmental challenges requiring support in terms of  physical, intellectual, language, social, and emotional development. Working together with all adults involved in a students growth and development, having ongoing discussions and carefully targeting next steps can assist this. It is paramount that we see beyond the Down Syndrome to the child and work carefully with the child: believing in them and not giving up on them.

Communication provides us with a baseline to engage with and support a child. Children with Down syndrome have challenges with hearing, including processing aural information. Therefore being overt about feelings, slowing down what we say, providing graduated questioning, rephrasing or summarising, providing non verbal communication and making sure the child is looking at you are all important aspects. A significant  and vital aspect is the use of alternative ways to make speech visible through, sign, pictures or text. Also explicit teaching of things like sequencing and processing, the pragmatics of conversations with peers and how to read emotions and take cues from other children.

We need to remember that disruptive behaviour is communication. There may be times we experience this when a child could simply be alerting us to the fact that they don't understand. During these times we need to discover what the child needs and focus on what we need to do to assist the child to refocus and get back on track. We also need to assist students with Down syndrome to join in with their peers as they may simply not know how! We should avoid interpreting this as they don't want to.

Learning is what happens when we support new connections in the brain. With Down syndrome, students may require more repetition and reinforcement than others, as they may take longer to make these connections. If we focus on providing meaningful learning and prioritise what motivates the child we are encouraging participation from them and guiding them in their learning journey. A learning journey that is part of a lifetime experience.