Practical Programs, Materials and Techniques

Abstract

This month I present a sound practical paper which is concerned with intensive play equipment. Intensive play is a very valuable activity for many kinds of young handicapped children. It helps children develop physically and socially and may even help develop some modest intellectual skills. However, it is timely to comment on the extensive use of materials by teachers to achieve objectives with children other than those for which the materials were obviously designed. It is very important when purchasing materials and programs to insure they are exactly suited to the children with whom you intend to use them. Even more important is the objective or outcome you expect to achieve with the children. All too often teachers expect children to learn fluent reading by having them do lots of block design cards, visual-motor training and/or learning to balance. Block design cards will help the children do block designs efficiently, visual-motor training will train visual-motor coordination, and balancing trains balancing skills. If you wish the children to learn language encoding and decoding, you have to teach them the language, reading, writing and spelling in a very efficient psycholinguistic, multisensory way combined with strong motivation through appropriate reinforcements. The above comments are in no way intended to reflect on the Port-A-Pit equipment, the real value of which is described in the following paper.