Working with ABE Students Who Have Had a Stroke or Brain Injury Part 2 – Student Intake and Instructional Strategies

Intake

If you have a student or a prospective student who has experienced a stroke or brain injury, set aside some time to meet with them in a quiet location and gather more information. Encourage the student to bring a family member or other support person to the meeting. Topics to discuss include:

• Nature of the injury and how it affects their daily life
• Past educational level and employment
• Health issues that may impact learning
• Family or other support systems
• Transportation
• Educational goals and learning styles
• Program expectations

Refer to PANDA’s Intake for ABE Students Who Have Had a Stroke or Traumatic Brain Injury.

Instructional strategies

It is helpful to keep Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in mind when working with a student with a brain injury. UDL helps teachers minimize barriers and maximize learning for all students by creating a welcoming environment; providing clear expectations; using a variety of instructional methods and materials; allowing a variety of methods to demonstrate knowledge; and using technology to enhance learning.

Strategies for physical challenges:

• Monitor classroom light and sound.
• Allow for easy movement throughout the school and classroom.
• Use large fonts, high contrast, and lots of white space on the page.
• Provide adaptive devices such as line readers, large print materials, magnifiers, color filters, pencil grips, ergonomic keyboards, or speech recognition software.
• Prioritize the most important activities.
• Shorten or provide assistance with written assignments.
• Allow students to answer in one or two words rather than complete sentences.
• Adjust the pace of activities and provide regular breaks.

Strategies for cognitive challenges:

• Provide consistent routines, schedules, and staff.
• Encourage the use of calendars, planners, binders and model their use.
• Keep visuals and distractions to a minimum.
• Provide a quiet area or cubicle.
• Allow extra time for students to express thoughts, get organized, and accomplish tasks.
• Speak slowly and clearly.
• Limit conversations to one person at a time.
• Redirect the conversation if a student gets off topic.
• Focus on one task or subject at a time.
• Make sure you have students’ attention before starting each lesson.
• Provide written instructions for homework and assignments.
• Break large or complex tasks into smaller chunks.
• Link new material to prior knowledge and interest.
• Gradually make tasks more difficult.
• Encourage “overlearning” through repetition, paraphrasing, summarizing, highlighting, and note-taking.
• Structure thinking with graphic organizers and steps to solve problems.
• Use short sentences.
• Keep written materials simple and direct.
• Use visuals to reinforce or clarify verbal information.
• Use a multimodal approach.
• Allow students to demonstrate knowledge in a variety of ways.
• Engage students’ senses, imagination, and emotions.
• Ask the student to teach someone else.
• Provide feedback and progress reports.
• Provide regular breaks.
• Use accommodations for standardized testing.

Strategies for emotional/ behavioral challenges:

• Post rules in clear language.
• Reduce unnecessary stresses in the classroom.
• Remain calm. Do not argue with a student during an outburst.
• Provide direct feedback if a student displays inappropriate behavior.
• Redirect by changing the subject or the environment, by focusing on something positive, or by reminding the student of their goals.
• Model appropriate behavior.
• Identify precursors to behavioral problems such as distraction or fidgeting.
• Work with the student to develop cues to alert them to inappropriate behavior.
• Get help before behaviors escalate (health care provider, support system, etc.). Note any safety concerns.
• Praise the student often and build on success.

For more information about stroke and brain injury, visit the PANDA website.

https://pandamn.org/category/brain-injury/