Guidelines for Educators: A Guide to a Supportive Classroom Environment

When a programme is implemented using activities that meet students' needs, behavioural problems are reduced to a minimum and teachers are able to discover the true joy of teaching. These guidelines provide the tools necessary for both teacher and student to succeed, for neither can do so without the other.

Providing a Positive and Effective Means of Communication

Children with Down syndrome need an effective and efficient means of communication that enables them to develop control over their environment. The inability to communicate effectively causes the child considerable frustration, which in turn leads to the development of undesirable behaviours as a way of expressing their wishes, needs, and feelings. Verbal language is typically delayed in children with Down syndrome, and expressive language delay has a negative impact on all aspects of positive learning and the ability to perform tasks effectively in any given situation. To promote positive communication, model programmes provide the following:

1. Sign language, taught to compensate for the child's inability to interact verbally. It enables the student to use words expressed through signs rather than resorting to undesirable behaviours, and enhances all aspects of learning — spoken words are always paired with hand signs.
2. Reading, taught alongside sign language. Children are taught to "read" symbols, illustrations, and written words. They read symbols and illustrations until they learn to read words. Children who are unable to learn to read words continue to rely on reading symbols and illustrations.
3. Total communication, meaning the combination of verbal language and sign language through reading symbols, illustrations, and written words. Total communication targets the child's maximum capacity for learning and effective performance across all environments.

Enabling Positive Social Interactions

The environment shapes emotional responses and provides the learner with the tools and opportunities needed to develop positive social interaction skills. Participation in positive social interactions fosters self-confidence, self-esteem, self-image, and self-respect. To create an environment that promotes these interactions, the following should be taken into consideration:

1. Speak in a tone that is respectful, gentle, kind, and approving. Adults set this tone by modelling positive social interaction and showing students genuine interest and respect — by involving them in social interactions and making them a source of enjoyment.
2. Maintain conversational continuity and turn-taking to facilitate interaction between children and adults. This means engaging children in back-and-forth exchanges several times in order to extend conversations. Adults often fail to engage children in more than a single exchange; the adult asks a question, the child responds, and the conversation ends there. The adult should exchange more turns with the child and expect — and wait for — the child to take the next turn at the end of each exchange.
3. Keep your speaking turns short and speak at the child's level of understanding. You may speak for ten seconds or ten minutes, but the child will tend to remember only the last thing you say. So let the last thing you say be the most important. Bear in mind that you will lose the child's attention if your turn runs on too long.
4. Teach the child some common phrases to use in routine social situations. We all use set phrases in the most frequently recurring social situations — taught to us by our parents and also learned through observation. These social phrases include greetings and responses, politely requesting things (please), how to respond when wishes are granted (thank you), how to answer the telephone, and what to say when leaving a social situation.
5. Remember the harmful effects of an aversive environment. Infants and young children who are shouted at and exposed to unpleasant stimuli actually experience sensory differences in their brains — differences that last a lifetime.

Providing Positive Means of Expressing Needs

The majority of socially unacceptable and disruptive behaviours are ways of communicating one of two things: (a) I want to get out of something — the group, the lesson, the activity, the classroom (escape behaviour); or (b) I want something — attention, a break, food or water, approval (positive reinforcement). To replace undesirable methods of expressing these needs with positive communication, please follow these steps:

1. Equip the student with positive means of expressing these needs. For a child who needs to escape a particular activity, teach them the sign for "break," or — if verbal expressions are used — the phrase "I need a break."
2. Initially, respond immediately to any appropriate request the student makes, in order to reinforce appropriate behaviour and confirm that it is more effective than being disruptive. For example, the student might sign "break," and the teacher responds at once: "Well done! You told me. Take a break in the story corner." (Some children may initially need to be accompanied to the break area — along the way, the teacher should be warm and supportive, praising the student for letting them know a break was needed.)
3. Once the desired behaviour is well established, begin introducing delay periods. The delay should be brief at first; ask the student to complete one simple task before taking their break. When they can complete a simple task or wait for a short period, gradually extend the delay until they are able to wait until the end of the activity.
4. In the meantime, identify why the student felt the need to escape. Was the activity too difficult, too long, too boring, or beyond the student's current ability level?
5. Remember that you cannot prevent students from learning how to meet their own needs. Take care not to inadvertently teach them undesirable behaviours as a means of meeting those needs.

Providing Positive Means of Expressing Feelings

For children to express their feelings in a positive way, they need to understand what feelings are and to have the vocabulary and means to express how they feel. Feelings are abstract concepts that are difficult to grasp and must be taught systematically. Guidelines for teaching about feelings include:

1. Dedicate a learning unit to feelings, using systematic instruction with illustrations, lotto games, and response cards. Begin with happiness and sadness, then gradually introduce additional feelings.
2. Use feelings response cards so that students can express any emotion and respond during storytelling (How did the father feel when ...? How did the mother feel when ...? How did the child feel when ...?).
3. Incorporate feelings into activities throughout the day — for example, playing the song "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands"; using feelings vocabulary during mealtimes, such as hungry, full, and thirsty; and adopting common greeting phrases such as "How are you feeling?" with response cards (happy, sad, fine, angry).
4. Teach students to express how they feel when someone hurts them, physically or emotionally. When a child is angry, empathise with them and ask them to tell you or show you — by pointing to response cards — how they feel (sad, angry, unwell).

Providing Positive Means of Expressing Choices

Begin by teaching children to make choices through selecting tangible objects such as food and toys, then move on to behavioural choices. Children often do not know that they have the freedom to choose, what their choices are, or that different choices lead to different outcomes. Guidelines for teaching the concept of choices and consequences:

1. Use visual illustrations to teach students the meaning of choices and the consequences of good and poor ones.
2. Use games that require students to think and identify the consequences of specific behavioural choices.
3. Use gestures: "thumbs up" for good choices and "thumbs down" for poor choices.
4. Affirm good choices with words and gestures (such as thumbs up): "Good choice! You put the books on the shelf yourself!" (The teacher might add: "I'm happy that you're ready for your break.")
5. Indicate "poor choices" with words and gestures (such as thumbs down): "Poor choice. Now you need to put all the books away." Add: "I'm sorry that you won't be able to take a break now."
6. Read stories and ask students to indicate the good or poor choice when characters in the story make a decision.

Providing Positive Means of Learning Rules

Civilisations are characterised by rules that provide order and security for society. Although most countries share the same fundamental civil laws, each has additional rules rooted in its own traditions and values. Our willingness to learn and abide by the rules of other countries enables us to extend beyond our own borders. Knowing and following rules makes us civilised — and grants us independence and freedom. In the same way, children need rules to help them become civilised — to know how to function effectively in society. It is said that living without rules is like living in a house without walls — you can imagine just how challenging that would be! Guidelines for teaching rules:

1. Define rules using simple, positive language.
2. Establish rules for each classroom according to the students' developmental level, abilities, and needs.
3. Display the rules — with illustrations and words — on a "rules board," accompanied by a matching set of "rule cards" attached with hook-and-loop fasteners; students can match, select, and name the rules daily during large group activities.
4. Create lotto games using the rules, in which students match, select, and name them.
5. Assign appropriate consequences for breaking rules, and emphasise the importance of following them.
6. Identify for the student which rule was broken — or ask them to identify it themselves — by pointing to it on the board. The student needs to see the rule and think about it in order to understand what they have violated.
7. Teach children to identify when others have broken rules and what they should do if they find themselves in a situation where someone is hurting them.

Source: Information in this section has been reproduced under an exclusive agreement with the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS). Available at: www.ndss.org