If you work in education specifically special education, you know how challenging it can be to manage a classroom with various unique needs. This is why there is a need for effective classroom management for kids with special needs. Those behaviors can often be distracting and frustrating for teachers and other students.
It probably would not surprise you to learn that 144 minutes per week of instructional time is lost in classrooms because of behavior disruptions. Special education teachers must master effective classroom management for kids with special needs.
Students with disabilities present with so many unique needs, that it becomes necessary to have a whole list of strategies for effective classroom management for kids with special needs to engage and manage their needs. With 13% of students who qualify nationally for special education, the need for effective classroom management for kids with special needs is abundant.
Do you ever feel like you don’t have all the strategies you need for effective classroom management for kids with special needs to be able to handle your classroom of unique students? You’re not alone.
A large percentage of new teachers say they felt very unprepared for managing the behaviors in their special education classroom.
If you need some help with classroom behavior management, read on for some tips and strategies for effective classroom management for kids with special needs you can use in your special education classroom in this article.
Managing a classroom with special needs kids can feel overwhelming. But with proven techniques, it becomes easier. This guide shares step-by-step strategies for effective classroom management for kids with special needs.
These tips are simple and work every time. With practice, you can create an environment that supports every child.
Let’s go in!
The Importance of Effective Classroom Management for Kids with Special Needs
Effective classroom management for kids with special needs is essential for their success. It creates a safe and structured environment. This is important because children with special needs thrive on routines and clear expectations. Without proper management, learning can become stressful and disorganized.
First, it helps maintain focus and reduces distractions. Many kids with special needs struggle to stay attentive. By using consistent rules, teachers can help them concentrate better. This leads to improved learning outcomes.
Next, effective classroom management for kids with special needs supports emotional well-being. Children feel secure when they know what to expect. A well-managed classroom reduces anxiety and builds confidence. Kids feel encouraged to participate and express themselves freely.
Moreover, effective classroom management for kids with special needs promotes inclusion. Special needs children feel accepted when the classroom is orderly and respectful. This allows them to work and play alongside their peers without fear of judgment.
Finally, it helps teachers manage time and resources effectively. A structured classroom minimizes disruptions. Teachers can then focus on meeting each child’s unique needs. This ensures every student receives equal attention and support.
In summary, effective classroom management for kids with special needs benefits both students and teachers. It improves learning, boosts confidence, and creates an inclusive environment. When classrooms are well-managed, every child has a chance to succeed.
Strategies for Effective Classroom Management for Kids with Special Needs
1. Establish Relationships With Students
Let’s face it, you spend a whole lot of time with your students over a year. Often you spend more face-to-face time with them than their parents or guardians. Of all the research-based strategies available to you, one of the most important is developing a real relationship with your students.
They need to believe that you are invested in them and that you know them. It goes beyond smiling and welcoming them, although important. You need to find a way to make a connection with every student.
They won’t always make it easy either. If they come from a home where they don’t have positive relationships with adults, they will be wary. Work to get to know their interests, and their love languages, and learn about their life outside of school. Attempt to teach them about real conversations.
Why do quality relationships matter? When there are inevitable behavior issues that arise, you have goodwill and a student who is invested positively with you. They are less likely to misbehave or less likely to want to give you a difficult time because you have this strong relationship.
2. Positive Learning Environment
As a teacher, you know you need to pay attention to a student’s intellectual, emotional, physical, and social needs. You need to set up your special education classroom that aims to meet the needs of each student in your room.
Establishing a positive learning environment where the focus is on both learning and positives will go a long way in curbing student behaviors. If they know, as students, that you will meet their needs and remain positive, they will be less likely to show you those negative behaviors.
Of course, you have to have a classroom with good procedures and expectations (more on this later) so students already understand how the classroom will function.
In a special education classroom, students will want to know you are there to support their learning and will help them when the learning is challenging for them. You create accommodations and scaffolds to help them learn like a student without a disability.
3. Set Expectations
Students understand schools have rules. As a teacher, you want to let your students know about your expectations.
There are a few students, who by nature, are rule followers. But many who are not rule followers, and some of them with disabilities, will also test those expectations.
The more you can establish expectations with your students about how your classroom operates, the more likely students will be to follow them. How do you establish those expectations?
You need to have clear and concise communication with students, routine, and practice. Students know what things bother them in the classroom. Establish routine and practice routines. Create and post anchor charts that give students information about the things they need to know.
Talk together as a class to establish norms of behavior that you all agree to abide by. When they are invested in creating those norms, they are much more likely to follow them.
Post classroom rules in a conspicuous place in the classroom, and review them regularly. Ask students to take turns reading the rules aloud as part of the daily routine. Make sure all students understand the rules of the classroom and the consequences for not adhering to them. It may be helpful to allow the class to help formulate the classroom rules.
4. Organize Your Lessons
No matter your age, you can recall sitting in a classroom or meeting where you are bored. You know those times when you don’t care about what’s being said to you, and you want to lean over to the person next to you in the meeting and start talking about your vacation plans?
This happens when you aren’t engaged in what’s happening around you. Teachers need to focus on thoughtful and deliberate lesson design so kids stay engaged in what is being taught. The higher the engagement in the learning, the less likely there will be behavior issues.
As special education teachers, you know part of that lesson design includes how you will accommodate and structure lessons for individual learners. What changes in lessons will you need so all students in your room can learn based on the goals of their IEP?
Students need to know the objectives of your lesson and what you expect them to learn. They need to have opportunities for practice and multiple checks for understanding. These are all engagement strategies for students that keep them focused on the lesson and not on negative behaviors.
5. Focus on Strengths
Sometimes when a student is challenged, it’s easy to forget that everyone is good at something. Students forget this too, especially if they struggle with academic work in school. Often educators see students misbehaving as a coping mechanism for when they don’t understand what school wants them to learn.
It’s so important for both special education teachers and students to remember that everyone is good at something. And if you are struggling with a student, you must focus on their strengths. This is also where having a relationship with them comes into play. You have learned about the student and can find those strengths.
Many special education students also have behavior intervention plans to help them modulate their behavior. Use student strengths (and interests) to build those behavior plans so they will be more effective in curbing unwanted behaviors.
As you focus on strengths, you can use those to engage students too. If a child is interested in dinosaurs, baseball, dogs, or water sports, he or she needs the opportunity to exhibit expertise in that subject.
Stages Learning Line was developed with the personalized lesson plan in mind. Students with autism thrive when they are studying a lesson plan that is formatted specifically for them.
6. Behavior Specific Praise
You will be hard-pressed to find a student who doesn’t respond to a positive. They might not always know how to react to praise, but they still like it.
Instead of focusing on the negatives that might be happening in your classroom (and this can be challenging, for sure), focus on the positives.
For many kids, the more responses and reactions they get from you for negative behaviors, the more negative behaviors they will give you. Inversely, the more positive reactions they get from you, the more positive behaviors you should see.
Having said that, your praise can’t be generic. Make the praise specific to the behavior you want to see. Use language to communicate specifically the behavior you wish to see.
7. Greet Students at the Door
Don’t underestimate the huge impact a greeting can have. When you are at the door of your classroom, offer students an enthusiastic, sincere greeting. When you greet them individually, it does several important things.
You help set the tone for how the class will go. You have established a positive interaction. One study suggests that greeting students at the door can get you a 20% boost in student engagement. This is a pretty big boost for being at the door with a friendly and personalized greeting.
The other value is that you can get a gauge almost right away for how a student is feeling. You see their face and interact personally with them. As you get to know your students, you will know right away if they are having an off day and can be prepared for it.
You can also use their specific social strategies to counteract a potential problem right at the beginning of the day.
8. Reminders and Cues
Students respond to reminders and cues. It’s important to let students know what you want them to do and how. If students aren’t sure what to do, they will do what they want or perhaps do something they shouldn’t do.
If students are finishing their math, for example, and wondering what to do next, you can verbally give a reminder for everyone to hear.
You could also use specific praise that will work as a reminder for other students. For example, you can thank a student by name for putting their math assignment in the tray and getting started on their independent reading. That way, the student got praise for their work, and the others got a reminder.
Cues can be important too. You can even use these in behavior plans. Perhaps it’s something as simple as placing a post-it note on a student’s desk to let them know they are doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
Also, use student behavior plans to establish what cues will work best with individual students.
When you make eye contact with students you can use nonverbal cues to remind them what they should be doing (or not doing).
9. Active Supervision
Gone are the days in education where the teacher sits behind a desk facing students who quietly work (and behave), while the teacher grades papers. Students need to see you actively involved in what’s happening in the special education classroom.
Proximity is very effective in addressing potential negative behaviors. Maybe students are working on something quietly. Instead of sitting behind your desk, go sit next to or near a student. You can monitor what they are doing and your presence helps prevent negative behaviors from happening.
Students will quickly get used to seeing you moving around the room. You can answer questions as you move around. You can answer questions and have small, quiet conferences with students. As you talk quietly with one student, the students around you benefit from hearing those conversations too.
Don’t think of this as you watching them, looking for unwanted behaviors. Instead, approach it positively, as a way to interact about what they are working on.
10. Ignore
Some might think that ignoring bad behaviors is not a good strategy. However, it can be a very effective strategy when ignoring is done deliberately.
If you have a behavior that is causing problems from a particular student in the classroom, instead of continually addressing it, try to ignore it. Then give the student positive feedback for other things and all the cues and reminders.
Recognize the students around the non-compliant students who are doing the things you want them to do.
It will be challenging to ignore, there’s no doubt. But when the student realizes they might not get the feedback or reaction they were trying for, eventually they will likely comply and do what is asked of them.
11. Optimize Your Seating Plan
As teachers, you know that if you let your students choose their seats, then they might not make the best choices. Yet, the more ownership you give students in the self-contained special classroom, the more likely they will be to comply.
You use seating with that goal in mind. This can include having a comfortable seating area that works as a reward area. Also, you might let students who are working in a group choose where they sit. If they know they need to handle it correctly, or you will ask them to go back to a separate desk, they will work harder to maintain appropriate behaviors.
Some kids will need separate seating. They will even appreciate it. Maybe they need to be separate because it provides them a place to work with fewer distractions or stimuli.
As educators, you need to make deliberate decisions about where and how kids choose to sit and work.
12. Use Research-Based Classroom Behavior Management in Your Classroom
One of the biggest challenges you will face in your special education classroom will be managing unwanted behaviors.
Be proactive and try one of these many strategies to get your classroom running smoothly.
If you are a special education director or counselor or have another role in working with special education students, you might benefit from monthly managing student behavior classes.
Make your classroom behavior management decisions with care and deliberation so you can have students engaged, learning, and behaving appropriately.
13. Use computer-based programs
Use computer-based programs to hold the interest of students with conditions like autism. Stages Learning Line is an invaluable tool when working with children with autism.
The platform is a revolutionary visual learning and assessment tool for teachers and educators working with young children with autism.
The program includes thousands of images and exercises created by a certified behavior analyst. You can also use your images to personalize lesson plans for students who have specific interests.
One standardized platform allows teachers to create effective, customized lesson plans, that can be shared with other students and teachers who may share the same interests.
The products preceding Stages Learning Line have been researched and implemented in schools around the world and have proven to be effective learning tools for instructing students with autism.
14. Set the desks in the classroom in rows
Set the desks in the classroom in rows, rather than using circular seating around large tables, if possible.
Students with autism need their own space. The student with ADHD is easily distracted, so a seat close to the teacher, facing forward works best.
Children with special needs are easily distracted, so keep their desks away from the windows, doors, and activity centers in the classroom.
15. Keep it simple
Give verbal prompts frequently, and be sure your instructions are easy to understand. Repeat instructions if the student does not seem to comprehend what you are saying.
16. Use visual aids such as charts, graphs, and pictures
The Stages Learning Line computer program consists of colorful, vivid pictures that are sure to please. Children with autism tend to respond well to technology. Stages Learning Line is very appealing to them and allows them to be interactive while learning.
17. Peers can be wonderful role models for students on the autism spectrum
Pair compatible children together when working on projects or participating in classroom activities. Many children welcome the opportunity to be a peer role model to the special needs student. The experience is not only positive for the student with autism but for the peer counselor as well.
18. Have a predictable schedule
Children with autism tend to prefer predictable routines. Give a warning if the daily schedule is going to change.
If there is going to be a field trip, a special guest in the classroom, or a substitute teacher, try to let the class know in advance.
Unexpected changes in the routine can be difficult for a child with autism.
19. Teach social skills
Teach social skills, such as hand raising, taking turns, and sharing as part of the learning curriculum. All students will benefit when reminders are given.
Children with autism often engage in self-stimulating behaviors such as hand flapping, rocking or even slapping themselves in the face. Help the other students in the class understand these behaviors.
20. Provide opportunities to take a break
Read a story, play a short game, stand up and stretch, or have a casual conversation. Sometimes an opportunity to get out of his seat and walk around the room can be very calming for the child on the autism spectrum. Try to be aware of the signs that your student may need a short break.
21. Be aware of environmental triggers
Loud noises, bright lights, and hot or cold temperatures can disrupt a child’s thinking pattern and cause an unnecessary classroom outburst. Be mindful of these environmental triggers and eliminate them whenever possible.
A Positive Experience All Around
Teaching students with autism presents challenges, but it can be a positive experience for the autistic child, their teachers, and classmates when proper teaching strategies are integrated into the daily routine.
Autistic children struggle with socialization.
The Stages Learning Line computer-based program opens up a world of possibilities for every enrolled student. The autistic student can work independently and can feel a sense of pride and accomplishment as he masters skills and learns new concepts.
The program makes it possible to focus on the things that appeal to the student.
Teachers feel amazed as they watch students with autism enhance their verbal skills while progressing through the program at their own pace. Stages Learning Line helps teachers improve the effectiveness of their teaching.
Parents feel delighted when they attend parent-teacher conferences and hear about their child’s positive accomplishments in education.
The combination of classroom management strategies and the Stages Learning Line program can help teachers create a learning environment that is productive, enthusiastic, and conducive to academic success.
Managing special needs classrooms requires patience and the right strategies. By following these tips, you can create a supportive environment. Use these ideas to improve behavior and learning daily. Effective classroom management for kids with special needs helps every student thrive!