Accessibility methods

Before, when we used to only manage Grade 1, the class was a mix of kids from all ages allowed, and we stumbled with big trouble: doing the class in a way it didn’t excludes anyone for their different levels of understanding.

And that’s why, in this instance I want to address a very important concept in every applied science: Accessibility.

Accessibility In this case means that something is designed in a way to make it easier for X group of people, but even better in most cases designed it easier for everyone. Have you ever seen in some phones the ability to enlarge the text unreasonable big? Well, it not really unreasonable, it’s for people with eye sight problems, but it also helps some other people read better by not tiring their eyes.

When we split our group of children in Grade 1 and 2, our way of planning changed our approach, since Grade 1 now consisted mostly of childs who couldn’t read, we realized our normal methods didn’t go too well with them, than there wouldn’t be other childs helping with the readings or help with the younger children.  That took us in the direction to do the same techniques with a different method, that’s it, a more accessible method for everyone.

A technique we used before was to do a word puzzle with the prayer text: we tried to learn more or less the prayer or quote, and then we divided it by words, and then asked the participants to piece it together by memory. It was a fun game and all, the more grow up childs enjoyed doing it, and the younger childs enjoyed watching or just going ahead a putting a word themselves even if they didn’t really knew what the piece of paper said, but one thing was clear: they weren’t learning as much.
Ok, how we made this same technique more accessible? Easy, we converted every key word into a picture which every child could correlate to the desired word or sentence. Here is a full example:

For the prayer: “O God, guide me, protect me, make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star. Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful.”

Guide = a map that guides
Protect = a house that protects
Make of me a Shining lamp = a lamp, or course
A brilliant star = Just that very thing
Thou are the Mighty = an arm flexing its biceps
and the Powerful = an athlete rising an Olympic bar.

Just what happened next? Every child taught the prayer in the first class, no exceptions no problems, an immense success.

Dances, hand signs or body movement are other forms of accessibility, but it’s also a possibility that the understanding through this techniques isn’t as clear as with clear or practical examples; as teachers is our duty to increase our range of skills and tools in order to keep the attention of our little pupils and make even more thriving our class for every participant.

Well, what are your thoughts? Have you ever applied accessibility methods to your class (even if you didn’t know it? Do you have concrete examples?