Primary framework: Teaching and learning strategies to support primary aged students with foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD)
A series of practical classroom strategies to support learning for students with FASD.
Support understanding
Use a variety of techniques to support Year 1 to 8 students to build understanding and successfully complete tasks.
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Use key techniques to support understanding
Use key techniques to support understanding
Support student motivation
- Select topics that fit students’ interests.
- Include some easy-to-achieve elements.
Keep language simple
- Be explicit and brief.
- Keep concepts concrete.
- Use vocabulary familiar to students.
- Accompany language with gestures, using hands, arms, and facial expressions.
- Use visual cues – illustrations or posters.
Break information into small chunks
- Break tasks into small steps.
- Give steps one at a time – use visuals to represent steps.
- Use digital technologies including: video, online games, and flip learning, so students can move at their own pace and revisit content as often as they need to.
Repetition is key
- Reteach and reinforce learned concepts.
- Teach steps in the same sequence.
- Offer multiple opportunities to practise.
Check in regularly with the student
Check in regularly with the student
Ask students regularly how they are doing.
Don't wait for them to come to you.
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Source: Ministry of Education | Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga
Source:
Ministry of Education | Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga
Use ten communication strategies
Use ten communication strategies
Students may have behavioural reactions when they experience language problems.
Use these strategies to enhance your communication with all learners, including those with FASD.
Video hosted on Youtube
http://youtu.be/Hmlekwklg-M
Closed Captions
Giving instructions
Giving instructions
- Eye contact helps students to process verbal information.
- Use exaggerated facial and body language to convey meaning.
- Use visual cues to aid understanding and trigger memory.
- Give specific instructions, for example, “Put your reading book in the group box,” rather than “Tidy up”.
- Use the student’s name at the beginning of the sentence.
- Use the same words for the same instruction every time. This helps to place the instruction into the long-term memory.
- Keep instructions short.
- State what you want the student to do, not what they shouldn’t do.
- Just because the student can repeat instructions back does not mean they understand them. You may need to get the child to show you they know what you mean.
Useful resources
Useful resources
Assessment for learning
Lading local curriculum guide series on using the right tools and resources to notice and respond to progress across the curriculum.
Next steps
More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Helpful classroom strategies years 1-8”:
Return to the guide “Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and learning”
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How to use this site
Guide to Index of the guide: FASD and learning
Understand:
Strategies for action:
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Identify needs and how to provide supportShow suggestions for Identify needs and how to provide support
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Support self-regulation and positive behaviourShow suggestions for Support self-regulation and positive behaviour
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Helpful classroom strategies years 1-8Show suggestions for Helpful classroom strategies years 1-8
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Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13Show suggestions for Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13
