Special needs children may find it difficult to understand the concept of time. Concept of time is different than actual telling of time. In some cases children know how to tell time but without having any knowledge about the true understanding of the concept of time. Some tips for special education teachers to help special needs children to understand the concept of time are given below:
- Give a task to special needs children such as writing a page of notebook, reading a page, making a painting, solving a math problem and have them complete the assigned task in the given time such as 10 minutes, 15 minutes or so. Set an alarm clock and tell the child that his/her time will finish as soon as the alarm will ring. Keep a watch in front of the class and show them the different hands (second, minute and hour hand) on the clock and tell them how initially it was at a given point and when their time finishes it has moved to the next digits that cover up the given time of 10 minutes, 15 minutes or 20 minutes and so on.
- Keep a calendar in the class. Through the calendar, you can show different parts such as how seven days make a week, 30 days make a month, 12 months make a year. You can also teach special needs children using the calendar what day comes before and what day comes after a given day. To teach the concept of different days of a week, you can make a schedule of different activities on each day of the week such as a painting class on Monday, games period on Tuesday and so on.
- Teachers can give an activity to teach the concept of time such as tell children to draw or write different activities of the day on a chart paper such as getting up in the morning, getting ready for school, waiting for the school bus, time school begins, lunch time at the school, evening play time, dinner time and going to bed at night. Ask them to write the time of each activity in front of it. This will help special needs children to associate their activities with time.
- Ask children to write birthdays or mark his/her birthday on the calendar or in each month, have them put the birthdays of any friend or family member on a calendar. This will help children to remember the months in a sequence.
- You can write down time on the clock, then ask children to draw their own clock representing the given time in their notebook or you can draw 3 or 4 clocks representing different times on the blackboard. Write down any one correct time and ask one student to come and identify the correct watch representing the given time during a class period, beginning of the day or end of the day.