Special Education: Hard of Hearing Classroom Settings (Option B)

The Classroom

Students with hearing problems or hard of hearing students need fewer distractions in visual environments to concentrate on what their teacher is instructing and see the sign language. Moreover, there should be less background noise and auditory distractions. For that, classroom seating should be circular or horse-shoe seating so that students could see each other and the teacher while communicating (Guardino & Antia, 2012).

The teachers desk should be in a position where she could interact with them more easily, which might be in the middle of the classroom or the seating of the children. The teacher should not turn her back on the students to be visually attentive to her and see what she is teaching for better comprehension. The childrens access to materials can be anywhere in the room, but they have to be well-organized. As mentioned earlier, the visual distraction needs to be minimized for hard of hearing students.

The types of accessible materials can be papers, colors, markers, crayons, and other supplies within the classroom. Areas of work and play should be separate; for example, the area of work would be their specified seats where they would read and write, while the area of playing should be a separate corner in the classroom where playing things. Some stories reading books for recreational time should be placed. This can be a designated area on the carpet in the corner of the room with a small shelf for books and toys. Sitting together on the carpet would encourage class engagement and better visuals while communicating. Display of students work can be on the opposite side of the wall where the whiteboard is placed so that when students are looking at the board, they should not be visually distracted by looking adjacent to the charts. When charts would be on their backs, they would be more focused on the teachers lecture on the board.

The lighting should not be too high or too low; too much lighting creates glittering in whiteboards, which is a visual distraction for students, while low lighting would impose low attention. Appropriate lighting would be conducive to accurate speech interpretation. Acoustics play an important role in engaged learning for hard to hearing students since noisy environments would make them struggle to understand their teacher. Sound absorption materials should be installed in the classroom so that level of background noise should be reduced, and a better understanding of teachers sentences should be promoted. Curtains or pictures on the windows can be installed if there are direct facing windows in the room (Deafness Forum of Australia, 2020). Chairs should have rubber on the tips of their legs for noise reduction. Also, students should be situated far from noise-producing equipment within the rooms to decrease background noise.

Compared to a typical general education classroom, the seating arrangement can be traditional (grid type),...

…the class of hearing-impaired students would be formulated by the teacher, especially in English, where keyword strategy and modified reciprocal teaching were effective. Changing classroom setting and providing more options for group learning can increase motivation in such students, and academic engagement can be high (Guardino & Antia, 2012).

A more favorable and motivational climate can be made by engaging these students in answering different questions about the lesson or engaging them in in-class activities. The stimuli presented should be mainly visual so that picking of cues with picture understanding should be enhanced. Perceptual distractions would be minimized with visual stimuli; in other cases, phonological units may depend on an acoustic, tactile, or orthographic factor (McQuarrie & Parrila, 2009).

Individual differences might be present if the students belong to diverse backgrounds. Also, if they are aware of disability, they would already be aware of the social exclusion from the normal children group and belonging to a special group of only special children (Most, 2007). They would be working in groups and would make friends among themselves. Hence, individual differences might be eliminated. The teaching and learning principles that would be effective for such students can be reading and processing strategies and development of English syntax (Power & Leigh, 2000). Making the general students learn the sign languages would also help in learning and communication of hard of hearing students.

When compared to a typical general education classroom, sign language learning would not be required.…