Special Education Classroom Designs: How Important are they?

Most of the schools including kindergartens, preschools and elementary schools design special education classroom around the concept of workstations or mini-environments. The emphasize remains on the freedom of the students in taking part in the activities of their choice so that they may learn at their own pace with a positive attitude that extracts better behaviour. Apart from this the effective special education classroom designs also accommodate the requirements of the physically challenged students.

A special school is a school which caters to the needs of students with special needs in providing special education. These schools are staffed adequately with normally a 6:1 student teacher ratio. Special schools are equipped with some other facilities for overall development and sometimes therapy of certain conditions. These classrooms are termed resource rooms. These include sensory rooms, swimming pools and soft play areas.

On the other hand special education classrooms are the separate rooms in a large regular school specially designed for the students with special needs or educational disabilities. These classrooms are divided into focused learning stations for natural exploration and hands-on learning.

Most of the schools including kindergartens, preschools and elementary schools design special education classroom around the concept of workstations or mini-environments. The emphasize remains on the freedom of the students in taking part in the activities of their choice so that they may learn at their own pace with a positive attitude that extracts better behaviour. Apart from this, an effective special education classroom design also accommodate the requirements of the physically challenged students.

Well designed special education classrooms are much beneficial in the overall development of students with special needs.The special education classroom should be so designed that it should be easily divided into small workstation or mini environments for a limited number of students. Following points should be taken into consideration while designing such classrooms:

There should be enough toys and materials within the easy reach of these students, so that they may easily use them and may replace accordingly after completing the assigned work-station task.

• Instructions to use this material should be clear to the students.
• The teacher should be creative enough to rearrange these toys and other learning materials to increase the recognition capability of the students.
• For encouraging the imagination and dress up skills of the students, there should be a dress up corner in the classroom.
• Keeping the big and little blocks, light and heavy balls and a weighing scale in the classroom will increase the analytical ability of the students.
• A special education classroom should consist of a sensory workstation where teachers may try to develop the senses of such students by using warm and cold materials, spongy and hard balls or rough and smooth toys.
• The books should be colourful and should be consisting of material appealing to the senses with textures and smells.
• All the children love music and the children with special needs are not exception.There should be music workstation in the special education classroom consisting of CDs and musical instruments.
• The special education classroom should be so designed that the students are not forced to sit for a long time instead they should be free to work together and develop a team spirit of their own by including the play and games in their study.

There is a huge scope of modifications. These are just a few points that need consideration while designing the classrooms. Separate classrooms with specific requirements of a particular disability can also be considered while designing.

The choice of the designs depends on the school authorities but the important thing is, one should not ignore this important aspect of teaching. This will not only help the teachers in handling the students better, but also provide the students with a comfortable pleasant learning environment.