Using Art in the Classroom to Support Special Needs Students

Introduction

Enhancing student development is always a concern for educators. The end goal of any curriculum is to provide the richest learning experience possible, giving all students the ability to learn. As Dunlap notes, "Art activities can be used to enhance cognitive, speech and language, motor, self-help, and social-emotional development" (260). Of particular concern is development for students with special needs. This paper provides an overview of how art can be used in the classroom to enhance student development for children with special needs, including the processes for incorporating visual, auditory, and physical strategies to enhance learning, specific accommodations for students with Attention Deficit, and approaches for encouraging language skills.

Visual, Auditory, and Physical Strategies to Enhance Learning

The use of visual, auditory, and physical strategies in adapting art for children with special needs can be accomplished in a variety of ways. By incorporating a variety of strategies, educators can further enrich the student's learning experience. Art is awash in visual richness. Visual strategies include verbally describing materials to students and explaining how to use them, as well as verbally cueing students about what they should be looking for.

Materials and tools should be chosen that visually encourage children to manipulate items. Visually stimulating colors and shapes can be enhanced by other tactile and multisensory experiences, such as finger painting, where children can not only watch as they create broad strokes of color and experiment with mixing different colors, but also feel the paint on their fingertips and explore the sensation of it being spread along the paper. Children can also watch as their hands manipulate and shape colorful play dough. Adding scents to the play dough, or sand to the paint, makes the experience even richer by involving sight, touch, and smell simultaneously.

In each of these examples, it is important to allow children the freedom to explore their materials, including allowing them to make a mess during their explorations. "Children quickly become inhibited and respond less creatively when they are constantly being warned to 'Be careful!' or told 'You are making a mess!'" (Dunlap 266). For this reason, children should be given appropriate smocks to protect their clothing and situated in a protected, well-defined workspace area with a wide, clear path, where getting messy will not be a problem and children can experiment with materials as freely as possible.

Verbal, visual, and physical cues should all be used when giving instruction. While modeling a process, the teacher explains exactly what is being done, reinforcing the visual instruction with the physical movement of the actual process and an auditory description of each step. For example, a teacher might state, "I'm painting while moving the brush in an up-and-down motion at this easel." In addition, rebus charts that illustrate the steps needed for the art project can be provided for students to reference throughout the activity.

There should be no restrictions on how materials or tools may be used. If a child prefers to place paper on the floor instead of an easel while painting, this should be allowed. If a child prefers to hold a paintbrush in their mouth rather than with their fingers, this should be allowed as well. Part of the instruction period should include demonstration of alternative uses of materials and tools, along with encouragement for children to try different approaches.

Finally, all tools used should be adaptive. Glue sticks are preferable to glue bottles, which can frustrate young learners. Chunky crayons, fat bingo markers, large markers, and double-handed ambidextrous scissors should be utilized to make the art experience as accessible as possible for children with varying physical abilities.

Special Concerns for Children with Attention Deficit

Three specific strategies can help meet the needs of students with Attention Deficit. First, making children wait for a turn should be avoided whenever possible; providing each child with his or her own set of materials is an effective way to accomplish this. Second, the materials selected for each project should be materials that can be actively used to release energy. Third, children should be limited to only a few choices at a time to assist in the decision-making process and reduce cognitive overload.

Conclusion

Utilizing art to enhance the learning development of special needs students is an effective enrichment tool. "Art therapy enhances development through experience with materials that strengthen cognitive and speech and language skills by encouraging children to talk about their projects, motor skills by encouraging movement, and develops social-emotional skills through opportunities to interact with others" (Dunlap 274). By intentionally introducing visual, auditory, and physical components into art projects, educators can amplify this development to meaningfully facilitate learning across all developmental domains.

References

Dunlap, Linda. An Introduction to Early Childhood Special Education. MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1997.