It is very important for a teacher to communicate effectively with speech impaired children to make learning effective. Let us see what steps a teacher can take to make communication effective and fruitful for students working to improve their speech.
• A teacher should be very careful while listening to speech impaired children. A teacher should listen with full attention when a child with speech problems speaks. The teacher should make the class 'pin drop' silent when such a child is speaking or saying something in the class. Teachers should also make other children listen carefully to the child.
• A teacher should not interrupt in between the speech of speech impaired children. Interruptions may confuse them and they might not be able to express their views. A teacher should not point out the mistakes of children with speech difficulties in front of their peers. Teachers should encourage children to ask different word meanings without any resistance to their asking for help. A teacher should help them find different word meanings in the dictionary.
• Teachers should give some extra time to speech impaired children in solving their speech disorders. Regular classroom teachers can also get help from the speech therapist in helping children with speech problems. By getting help from the speech therapist, the regular classroom teacher could easily help children in correcting their speech disorders. Children with speech disorders should be encouraged to speak loudly with full confidence and without any hesitation.
• Teachers can use speech models to explain the meaning of certain things to children which they are unable to understand verbally. With the help of speech models things can be explained easily in an effective manner. Some children face problems in understanding the verbs and teachers along with the speech therapist can provide strategies to understand the pronunciation of verbs and their context in sentences. In addition, teachers can explain verbs to them by giving examples from day to day life and by making simple and easy sentences for better understanding that children can imitate for better context.
Thus, by adopting certain simple and easy ways of instruction, a teacher can easily help children with speech impairments improve their speech disorders.
