Remedial programs are crafted to shorten the gap between what the child knows/understands and the age-appropriate standards. Remedial is not just handwriting or helping your child with homework. It is a core skill training that includes academic areas, understanding/comprehension skills, phonetical awareness, creative thinking, and more. These programs make a child more independent in a classroom setting.
Consistency
If your remedial educator is training your child once or twice a week or over the weekends, it is not effective or adequate training. There are remedial programs that are conducted five hours a day for a couple of days every week. Most centers call it the intense training program. A neurotypical child’s attention span would be around 18 to 30 minutes for a primary school child, increasing with age. Think about the attention span of an ADHD or a sensory-issue-riddled child. So, bombarding the child with hours of training does not matter. The main element that matters is consistency. Choose a remedial program open to training your child at least three times a week.
Customized teaching methods
Understandably, a child of specific school age would have certain topics in common. For instance, a first grader would require training in handwriting, arithmetic functions, comprehension, reading, and more. However, your child might not respond to the conventional style of teaching. Moreover, a child with lagging phonetic awareness cannot be taught to read. Thus, the teaching method should incorporate what the child knows to teach what the child doesn’t know.
Usually, in the case of remedial programs, the educator would create visual-based study materials that are attractive to children. Moreover, such a process should also involve using several examples, showing real-time examples, or examples with things the child likes.
While choosing a remedial program, pick the one that offers customized teaching methods based on your child’s requirements and likings.
Creating goals
Your remedial educator should devise short-term and long-term goals. Failing to meet the short-term goal is not a deal-breaker or a red flag. It is about creating a target and working towards it. Creating goals helps the educator and the parents to know the list of skills or concepts that should be taught. Moreover, as you check off all the achieved goals, we will get a clear idea as to which methods of training work and which ones are not effective.
Frequent assessment and feedback
No one method of remedial education would suit all children. Thus, the remedial educator should offer frequent assessments like homework assignments, class projects, activities, tests, quizzes, etc. The idea of integrating assessments and training has two advantages. The first advantage is learning where the child’s progress is and the areas where more focus is required. The second advantage is introducing the child to the exam concept, timing his work, and more. Beyond all these, it is found that knowledge retention is more when students are given more assessments along with steps taken to work on the lagging areas.
Feedback should be from both ends. The remedial educator’s feedback is essential to the parents for the home program and discussing it with the school teachers. On the other hand, the remedial educator should be open to feedback from the school teachers and parents.
Parental involvement
Understandably, most of the resources and study techniques that remedial educators use are their business tactics. However, shielding every piece of information from the parents would not help the child. Parents should be welcome to participate in the training session and be offered training or tips on training the child at home. The involvement of parents is a great way to boost the speed of learning and increase learning opportunities beyond class hours.
Flexible learning
Goals and timetables are inevitable for a child’s development. However, in the case of a special needs child with varying sensory issues, attention problems, and a lack of proper expressive skills, it is hard to sit through the timetable five days a week throughout class hours. The child might show resistance, or there would be a drop in the attention level. The program and the educator should be flexible enough to add fun elements for the child to learn a specific skill or concept. Not everything has to be on the blackboard and notebook. The flexibility should extend toward the child’s choice of subject to learn, teaching method, reinforcers, and more.
All these are the checklist items to pick the right remedial program for your child. However, the checklist applies to the parents too. There should be consistency, goal creation, assessment, and flexibility from the parent’s side. Empowering your child to have an independent life starts with academic skill training. Pick the right remedial educator and consistently stick to the home programs for effective results.