Life Skills for Children with Learning Difficulties

Over 61% of children with disabilities aged between 5–19 years attend some educational institution (UNESCO, 2019) in India. However, there is very little understanding of the challenges they face and interventions needed to support them and help improve learning outcomes. Rural India typically gives less importance to the nutritional value of the food given to the children, more so in case of girls. Such malnutrition reflects as slow learners in the children when they are at school. A child can be described as a slow learner if his or her thinking skills develop at a notably slower rate than that of his or her peers. The child will carry on through the exact same developmental stages as his or her peers but at a comparatively slow rate. Also, the child typically has below-average intelligence. Typical characteristics reflect in aspects like - 

• Slow learners tend to learn slower 
• The social behavioural pattern of slow-learning children is mostly immature and unstable
• Identification of sounds is difficult for slow learners
• Slow learners with visual-motor issues prefer oral learning over visual learning
• Children who are slow learners find it hard to express themselves verbally and cannot articulate easily

We will 

• Design interventions to identify and support slow learners and provide tools to teachers to observe children’s behaviour in normal as well as controlled environments.
• Provide tools for observations of children for different environments like the playground, at home, in group situations and understand their reaction to different stimuli. 
• Use the observations and information to work with psychologists as well as teaching experts to implement the best possible remedial measure. Under strict physical and medical examination, the anomalies, disabilities, and handicaps can be highlighted.
• Evaluation and identification of deficiencies in school achievement would be done through psychometric, scholastic, personality tests to throw light on arithmetic, reading, spelling, composition, writing, language, and comprehension.
• Complement Scholastic tests and standardised intelligence tests with understanding of temperamental traits and emotional balance.
• 13 students per each teacher

Facilitating the learning process through different methods, like experiential learning through hands-on activities, laboratory experiments, object handling exercises, physical activities including individual as well as group games. In order to facilitate such methodologies to impart education to the rural population, specially trained teachers with expertise in helping such children to be able to learn alongside all children.

Impact to be visible in 

Survey and Social investigation of in the rural Kadapa

We have identified 200 children with learning disabilities and difficulty in Kadapa and surrounding places

Help their learning process and bring readiness among them to mainstream education and schooling

Marked improvement in the performance of the learning capabilities of the 200 children