Providing Motivation:

The slow learners are to be motivated. It can be done through a sense of

satisfaction through the sense of accomplishment. He can learn if the
situation given him security and confidence. Good teacher pupil
relationship is good at all times.

2. Learning Readiness:
Activities should be planned to provide readiness for learning for
preschool stage of all kinds’ intellectual, emotional social and physical. The
teacher has to recognize whether the child is ready of the next stage by
systematic observation of his performances.

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3. A Practical Approach:
Practical approach based on meaning and usefulness. The slow learning
children would be more at home if they can hear, see and touch and which
are within this experience. Teaching which is related to practical human
experience is more successful than teaching which involves abstractness,
symbols and delayed gratification.

4. Concept Formation:
Slow learners children are capable of making simple generalizations but
they must be given ample opportunities to experiment, explore and
discuss. The child can be shown or let to discover relationships,
similarities, his curiosity is aroused, and his interest can be expanded and
enriched. In a nurturing classroom he will be willing to experiment and
learn by doing, his concepts are to be developed.

5. Grading of Work:
In case of SL children the materials are to be graded to ensure continuous
progress and feelings of success. This is real difficulty for the teacher as
text-books are written by others. The teacher can make his own material
or analyse the task and make a graded presentation to ensure learning by
the slow learning pupil.

6. Assessment of Progress:
It is recommended that of the SL child a cumulative record be kept of his
achievements over a period, so that individualized treatment is ensured.
The child here can compete against himself.

7. Consolidation:
Frequent repetition, adequate revisions are to be encouraged for better
consolidation of the learned material.

8. Activity Methods:
The child must do things with his body, his head and his brain. He must be
given freedom to learn and experience. He must experiment and
experience.

Cooperation among Various Professionals:

In diagonals, treatment and research cooperation between teachers,
doctors, psychologists, administrator and social workers is vital. The
psychologist can make a contribution by providing a detailed picture of the
child’s personality, by discovering any anomalies in development,
perceptual and conceptual difficulties, and intellectual strength and
weakness emotional abnormalities and by investigating learning difficulties
generally, including treatment procedures. The importance of social
workers is greatly felt but it has not taken off.

Parent Education and Guidance:

There are many difficulties that can arise because of wrong attitude in
home. The improvements brought by teachers of SL children are often
nullified by bad home conditions and parental neglect or ignorance.
Parents therefore need advice on how to promote development of their
handicapped children. The parents therefore are to be guided and in this
context a social worker would be of great assistance.

Developing Skills and Abilities among Slow Learners:

The measure task of a teacher to develop the following skills and abilities
among slow children:
1. Teaching for verbal ability and skills.

2. Developing Reading skills and competency.

3. Teaching for developing number ability and skills.

4. Teaching for developing Creative Arts Skills.

1. Teaching for Verbal Ability and Skills:

In school verbal instructions and explanations are quite important. Many
of the slow learners have retarded speech articulation, vocabulary, brief
sentence, grammatical errors. Emotional reluctance is the chief reason for
their backwardness of expression. They need a great deal of speech
stimulation through play and through talking to adults, listening to them.

Expression is often lacking in order, sequence and selectivity. Error in

usage are quite frequent i.e., he runned, he catched etc. These children
are also poor in remembering messages and listening to instructions,
stories and other forms of spoken words. Attention therefore, should be
given to listening and reproduction skills.

Poor language may be due to several factors—poor background of speech

and language at home, a limited background of experience, emotional and
social factors and the limitation of the slow learner’s thinking capacity.

These children can develop their language by talking about what they have
seen or done, by discussing what they are going to do and how they are
going to do it. These are most effective for they evoke stronger feelings of
enthusiasm and interest and therefore expression.

The teacher should guide and stimulate the child’s thinking about his
experiences e.g., what they noticed while conceding to school, climbing
tree, making and explaining scrap books, explaining what they learned in
television, role playing in a drama in school, listening to stories, puppetry
allowing the puppets to speak to each other conversation among peer
groups. The fact that many children do acquire a better form of speech for
use in school does suggest that progress can be made.

2. Developing Reading Skills and Competency:

Reading similarly is not an isolated skill. It is an aspect of the integrated
language development programme which includes speaking, writing and
spelling. For slow learning or backward children a sound reading
programme is necessary.

It should consist of:

(a) The Development of Reading Readiness:
In the early stages visual method should be used. Teacher should
concentrate on the acquisition of slight vocabulary of meaningful words.
The classroom should contain plentiful materials to allow activities at
different levels of maturity, sand, water, paint, clay, toys, colour, picture
books, scrap books, group models.

These increase knowledge and interests, vocabulary, powerful expression,

improved work habits, social relationships, interest in reading,
classification, labeling, visual discrimination by looking at pictures, jigsaw
puzzles, matching games, drawing and tracing pictures, personal and social
development through play.

(b) The Acquisition of Sight Vocabulary of Meaningful Words:

The teacher gives written sentences and words and asks the child to draw
a picture on the opposite page about what she/he read. The child was
asked to trace over the word and sentence. The teacher makes
independent sentence cards and word cards independent of the book. In
this way, the child recognizes the words. Each child learns comprehensions
and it becomes an ego involved activity. In this way the slow learning
children learned, consolidated their learning, and learned vocabulary. The
child gradually learns through supplementary materials.

(c) The Development of Independent Reading Aided by the use of Phonic

Analysis and Other Word Recognition Techniques:
Backward children are usually deficient in these abilities and require a
systematic programme of word recognition exercises of reading progress
is to be maintained. It should be a right, isolated, elaborate course of
phonic drills or word form, and an interesting, integrated controlled attack
on the analysis and synthesis of sound units which will lead to continuing
improvements in reading for content and ideas.

(d) The Development of Speedy, Relaxed, Silent Reading for Content and
Ideas:
The choice of books is important at this stage to cater for the children’s
individual interests and reading levels Backward SL boys should be little
less difficult than their level or understanding SL girls like family situation
books, fairy stories and books on animals. With these children particular
attention has to be paid for word meaning comprehension and
development of ideas.

Writing plays an important part in reading process and programme. It

assists visual discrimination and memory and the relation between visual
and auditory patterns.

Some fundamental cognitive incapacity underlay reading problems of slow

learner. In fact, it requires a significant change in the attitudes. The anxiety
which is likely to control the slow learner should be reduced by giving
continuous encouragement and initial success. The crux of the matter is
motivation. The non-reader is to be persuaded that reading is interesting,
it can be useful to him and he can master it.

Remedial teaching must take into account the child’s weakness ‘noticed at
reading. Silent reading and refreshing are quite significant. Silent reading
can be brought by work sheets with instructions. The other method is
Kinaesthetic method i.e., tracing and writing words. Systematic work in
spelling and a technique of learning would be important in doing so.

3. Teaching for Developing Number Ability and Skills:

Arithmetic is a way of thinking about number. Arithmetic teaching
therefore is concerned with application of number system to the
arrangement, manipulation, and measurement of quantities and the
development of the ability to deal with member relationship symbolically
and by abstraction in the absence of concrete objects. They should be
taught through concrete-pictorial-symbolic models in addition to general
pedagogical concerns being kept in mind. Piagetian approach to teaching
number system and arithmetic is quite effective i.e., conservation and
formal logical operations.

The Piagetian approach to teaching of concept of number and arithmetic

through conservation exercises have been exemplary, e.g., more less,
same or less, long and short, heavy and light, fast and slow, middle and
end, before and after. The readers are here referred to a book written by
the author on this approach. The examples of mass, quantity, number
area, volume movement are all found in the text.
4. Teaching for Developing Creative Arts:
It has been said earlier that most slow learners enter into schools with
needs of achievement and success to counteract their loss of confidence
and sense of inadequacy. Many children are able to achieve success or
have it contrived for them in one or other creative activities. On this
foundation the academic achievement can be based.

Apart from this there is a valuable relief and relaxation obtained through
touching and handling of materials of moving about and doing. It is as if
saying X is frustrated as fatigued in his school work then let him do his
painting. There is much to be said in favour of formal work being closely
and genuinely linked with creative work. Pent up feelings and hostility or
frustration finds a safe outlet in a free drama. The fact that such outlets
are achieved in a situation watched and controlled by a tolerant teacher
seems to make emotional release all the more effective. Art has
therapeutic value.

One of the outstanding characteristics of slow learner is poor

concentration. They are often destructible and lacking is persistence.
Within limits the ability to concentration is learnt in the repeated
experience of absorbing and satisfying activity. Plan and creative work
offer conditions for the development of concentration and persistence.

Role of Teacher:
More specifically, Tanseley and Guilford (1971) suggested that the teacher
of slow learners should:
1. Organise the class in small, carefully selected group.

2. Have wide range of supply of activities e.g., readers, free access to arts
and craft materials.

3. Pay particular attention to preparation of materials.

4. Allow brighter children to help duller ones.

5. Encourage children to participate in planning activities.

6. Allow as much as freedom as possible within the well-established limits.

7. Avoid rigidity and accept student’s suggestion.

8. Be sensitive to children’s suggestion.

9. Have several periods each week when the class is engaged as a whole
on one activity, story, drama, music.

10. Try to obtain parental cooperation.

11. Do not be reluctant to admit failure with an individual child.

Suggestion for Slow Learners Children:

Slow learning children cannot advance much but their intellectual
limitations, often reinforced by social and cultural ones, restrict the range
of his experience as well as the depth of his understanding. The child’s
activities, in relation to his environment nourish his mental growth and
language development. Their experience and knowledge can be increased
at the initial stage by understanding of the natural environment, why and
how things happen exploration, talking and questioning, and nature study.

It is said, by Seguin:
i. Teach nothing indoors that can be learned outdoors.

ii. Teach nothing with dead things when you can make observations on
living things.

iii. Nature should be classroom and the school book in case of difficulties.

Of course, the metropolis/urban schools may apply these principles by

appropriately having pets and aquarium and by arranging field trips
occasionally.

(1) Non-Promotion:
Experimental facts of a group of psychologists are in favour of non-
promotion of slow learners. These psychologists follow a policy that
promotion of slow learners. These psychologists follow a policy that
permits retention of a child in a class for the second year. But very often, it
is found that when a child is not promoted and retained in the same class,
he resorts to self-punitive measures. For this reason, many educationists
object to this idea of non-promotion. Rather, they lay emphasis on
remedial instructions and understanding.
(2) Reinforcement:
Slow learners lack the experience of reinforcement in the home
environment. Fear of failure and disinterest are pertinent in their daily
school activities. So adequate and appropriate measures should be taken
to improve their academic status. When a slight improvement is noticed
some motivational techniques may be used to stimulate. Use of
illustration, examples and aid may also be conducive for creating
motivational atmosphere inside the class. A teaching expert should try to
instill confidence in children and he must also make constant efforts to
remove fear of failure.

(3) Individual Attention:

Treatment of slow learners should be given individual attention. The
teaching experts may place emphasis on recognition of individual
difference among students. They must also respect the individuality of the
child through helpful environment. Again teaching experts.