Developing problem solving and higher order thinking skills with children SEN has always been something I found a challenge as I thought 'quality questioning' relied heavily upon receptive and expressive language skills that the children in my SEN class were in the early stages of developing.
However, after some serious reflection and coaching time on the 'Outstanding Teacher Program' course I was lucky enough to attend Kate and I reached the conclusion that actually it's possible to use the classroom environment to pose questions to children with SEN that can enable them to develop their problem solving skills.
Following this revelation my classroom and the lessons that I planned always had a creative element of non-verbal questioning that really encouraged the children in my class to think around problems in a different way...so here are 5 of my favourite ideas for overcoming reliance on language to question children that I’ve found really encourage children with speech and language difficulties to understand and respond to quality questioning thus helping to develop their problem solving skills
1. What do you need? – placing children’s favourite toys in closed clear plastic jars is a great way to encourage them to think about how they’re going to get what they want. Placing pictures of the adults in the room on top of the jars can help develop early communication skills through exchanging a picture to ask for help to open the jar.
2. How will you do that? – when the children first come into the classroom have nothing set out on the tables except for pictures of activities they would usually engage with. They can choose the picture of the activity they want and find the matching picture on resource boxes around the room. They can then set up the activity themselves.
3. What’s next? – using symbols or pictures allow the children as individuals or small groups to develop their own timetable for the morning or day
4. What could you do instead? – this is one of my favourites…freeze motivating toys such as cars, dinosaurs, small world figures etc. overnight and set them in a builder’s tray for the children to explore. Have access to different solutions to the problem of how to get the toys out e.g. Warm water, spades, trowels etc (this also works well with jelly!)
5. How are you going to…? - this is a popular speech and language technique known as sabotage and works really well in group activities to get children thinking about what’s missing, what they need and how they’re going to get it. For example I used this in a cooking session where I offered the children the flour before the bowls. When the children realised I was going to pour the flour on the table they quickly started telling me we needed bowls first!
Hopefully these ideas will get you thinking about how to use your classroom environment and lessons to question children and get them thinking!
Flour in a clear, plastic jar labelled with an adult's picture to ask for help in the messy writing tray...
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